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1 



EPOCHS OF ANCIENT HISTORY 


ROME AND CARTHAGE 

THE PUNIC WAPS 


BY 

R. BOSWORTH SMITH. M. A. 


sistant-Master in Harrow School: formerly Fellow of Trinity College, Oxford 
A uthor of “ Mohammed and Mohammedanismand 
‘ Carthage and the Carthaginians 


NEW YORK: 

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS- 



i 









Q37,^i- 

Sis“l 


MATRI ME£ 

CUJUS NOMEN VIV/E 
HUIC OPUSCULO PRAETEXI DEBUERAT 
QUOD MATERNO AMORE INCEPTUM FOVEBAT 
MORTU./E PERACTUM 


AMANTISSIMUS DEDICO 



PREFACE. 


The pages which follow are an abbreviation, spe¬ 
cially authorized by me for Messrs. Scribner, of my 
larger work on “ Carthage and the Carthaginians.” 
I have made no attempt to alter the language of the 
larger work, except where it appeared to me that I 
could alter it for the better. Indeed, any attempt 
to write down to the capacities of younger readers 
seems to me quite unnecessary in dealing with an 
“epoch of history ” which, in the unique interest 
and importance of its subject, and in the simple 
grandeur of its leading characters, appeals with 
almost equal force to young and old. And if I 
have been led to dwell at greater length, and with 
apparently more genuine enthusiasm, on the ele¬ 
ments of greatness which are to be found in Car¬ 
thage, and on the genius of her two greatest sons, 
than on the qualities of her successful rival, it is not 

vii 



Preface. 


viii 

because I would suggest any doubt that Rome wa. 
the fitter of the two for empire, or that her victory 
was on the whole the victory of progress and of civili 
zation ; but because, owing to the conditions unde 
which the history of Carthage has come down to us, 
and the distorted medium through which we must 
needs view it, it is, in my judgment, the proper 
business of the historian, so far as in him lies, to 
restore the balance. Multitudinous voices of th 
past, of the present, and in a sense, even of the 
future, attest, in language that cannot be mistake)' 
by anyone, the greatness of the “Eternal City;” 
but the mournful and solitary silence which weighs 
upon the traveller as he stands upon the deserted 
site of Carthage, while it attests how thoroughly the 
Romans carried out their hateful work of oblitera¬ 
tion, calls upon him in tones which to him, at least, 
are equally unmistakable, to lay stress on what may 
be fairly said for the city and the civilization whicl 
have never spoken, and can now, unfortunately, 
no longer speak for themselves. 

One chapter only of this volume seems to require 
special comment here. In the spring of 1877, after 
I had finished the first draft of my larger work, 1 
was enabled to pay a visit to the site of Carthage 
and its neighbourhood. It was a short visit, but 


Preface. 


IX 


was full of deep and varied interest. It was my first 
sight of an eastern city, and it brought me for the 
first time into direct personal contact with that vast 
religious system which is one of the greatest facts 
of human history, and which from causes deep as 
human nature itself, seems destined, whatever the 
upshot of the present Eastern difficulties always to 
maintain its hold on the Eastern world. I was able 
several times to visit the site of the Phoenician city, 
and to study, as far as my limited time would permit 
me, on the spot those questions of its topography 
and history with the general bearings of which I had 
been so long familiar in books. I walked round the 
harbours of Carthage, bathed in water which half 
preserves and half conceals its ruins, explored the 
Byrsa and the cisterns, traced for many miles the 
course of the aqueduct, crossed the river Bagradas, 
and examined, amongst other spots renowned in 
ancient story, the site of the still more ancient city, 
the parent city of Utica. In the concluding chapter 
of this volume, I have endeavoured to gather up 
some of the impressions which I derived from these 
varied sights and scenes; and I hope I have been 
able by these means, as well as by various touches 
which I have inserted subsequently in other portions 
of the book, to communicate to my readers in 


X 


Preface. 


America, what I think I gained for myself, a more 
“ vivid ” mental picture of that ancient city whose 
chequered fortunes in connection with her great 
antagonist, I have endeavoured to relate. 

The Knoll, Harrow, 

December, 1880. 


CONTENTS. 


CHAPTER I. 

CARTHAGE. 

PAGE 

Characteristics of Phoenicians—Their defects—Size of their 
territory—Their relations to Israelites — Early commerce in 
M editerranean —Pre eminence of Phoenicians—Origin of 
Carthage—its position and population—i ts relation to 
S icily— Our knowledge of Carthage, whence derived—its 
early history—Rapid growth of its empire — Its dealings 
with the Native Africans — with the Phoenician cities in 
Africa—with Tyre—with Sicilian Greeks—Constitution of 
Carthage—The Suffetes—The Senate—Deterioration of 
constitution — -The*'Hundred” Judges—Close oligarchy — 
General contentment—Social life of Carthaginians—Their 
commercial principles—Their agriculture—Merits of 
Mago's work on Agriculture—Carthaginian religion — - 
Worship of Baal-Moloch—of Tanith or Astarte — -Inferior 
divinities — Worship of Melcarth—Carthaginian literature 
—The Army—The mercenaries and the Numidian Ca¬ 
valry-Condition of the masses—Colonization—Periplus 
of Hanno—Disaffection of subject races—Was Rome or 
Carthage best fitted for empire ?.i 

CHAPTER II. 

CARTHAGE AND ROME. 

Rome and Carthage compared—Contrasted—Origin and 
growth of Rome—Constitutional progress—Military pro¬ 
gress—Conquest of Etruscans - of Gauls—of Latins, b c. 

390 — of Samnites—Roman methods in war — War wit h 
Pyrrh us—Rome brought face to face with Carthage . 23 

xi 





Contents. 


xii 


CHAPTER III. 

FIRST PUNIC WAR. 

MESS AN A AND AGRIGENTUM. 

(264-262 B. C.) 

PAG! 

Relations of Sicily to Carthage and Rome—Appeal of Ma- 
mertines for aid—The question at issue—Importance of 
the decision—Romans occupy Messana—They attack 
Syracuse—Results of first campaign—Romans ally them¬ 
selves with Hiero—Carthaginians unprepared for war— 
Agrigentum—Its siege—Its fate .... 30 


CHAPTER IV. 

FIRST ROMAN FLEET. BATTLES OF MYI..-E AND ECNOMUS. 

(262-256 B.C.) 

Carthaginian naval supremacy—Roman naval affairs—Com¬ 
mercial treaties with Carthage—Difficulties of Romans— 
Want of ships of war—Want of sailors—The new fleet— 

Its first ventures—Naval science and tactics of the An¬ 
cients—The Corvus—Battle of Mylas—Honours paid to 
Duillius—Egesta— The Romans attack Sardinia and Cor¬ 
sica—Energy of Carthaginians—Romans resolve to in¬ 
vade Africa—Enormous naval armaments—Route taken 
by the Romans—order of battle—Battle of Ecnomus . 39 


CHAPTER V. 

INVASION OF AFRICA. REGULUS AND XANTHIPPUS. 
(256-250 B.C.) 

Invasion of Africa—Romans overrun Carthaginian territory— 
Shortsightedness of Carthaginians—Changes necessary in 
Roman military system—Recall of Manlius—Victory of 
Regulus—Desperate plight of Carthaginians—Terms of 


Contents. 


peace rejected—Arrival of Xanthippus—He is given the 
command—His great victory near Adis—Joy of Cartha¬ 
ginians—Thank-offerings to Moloch—Departure of Xan¬ 
thippus—The survivors at Clypea—Roman fleet destroyed 
in a storm—Carthaginian reinforcements for Sicily—Ro¬ 
mans builda new fleet—Take Panormus—Second Roman 
fleet destroyed in a storm—Carthaginians threaten Pa¬ 
normus—Romans build a third fleet— Battle of Panormus 
—Part played by elephants in first Punic War Story of 
embassy and death of Regulus—How far true ? .54 


CHAPTER VI. 

HAMILCAR BARCA AND THE SIEGE OF LILYB^JUM. 

(250-241 B.C.) 

Fortresses remainingto Carthaginians in Sicily - Siege of Lily- 
bseum—Its origin and situation—Early siege operations— 
Carthaginians run the blockade—Hannibal the Rhodian— 
Carthaginian sortie—Distress of Romans—The Consul 
Claudius— Battle of Drepanum Claudian family - Ro¬ 
man reinforcements for siege of Lilybreum lost at sea— 
Romans seize Eryx—Hamilcar Barca—He occupies 
Mount Ercte—Exhaustion of Romans—Culpable conduct 
of Carthaginians—Genius of Hamilcar—His plans—His 
enterprises—He transfers his camp from Ercte to Eryx— 
Romans build one more fleet—Lutatius Catulus—The 
Carthaginian plan—Battle of /Egatian Isles—Magnanimity 
of Hamilcar—Terms of peace—Roman gains and losses 
—Carthaginian losses and prospects—Contests only de¬ 
ferred .74 


CHAPTER VII. 

HAMILCAR BARCA AND THE MERCENARY WAR. 
(241-238 B.C.) 

Events between First and Second Punic War -Significance of 
Mercenary War—Weakness of Carthaginian Government 



XIV 


Contents. 


PASS 

—Symptoms of mutiny—Revolt of mercenaries and native 
Africans—-Hanno and Hamilcar Barca—The Truceless 
War—Its atrocities and termination .... 96 


CHAPTER VIII. 

HAMILCAR BARCA IN AFRICA AND SPAIN. 

(238-219 B. C.) 

Conduct of Romans during Mercenary War—They appro¬ 
priate Sardinia and Corsica—Peace and war parties at 
Carthage—Hamilcar's command—He crosses to Spain— 
Advantages of his position there—His administration and 
death - His character—Administration of Hasdrubal— 

New Carthage founded—-Early career of Hannibal—Re¬ 
missness of Romans—Rising of Gauls in Italy—Its sup¬ 
pression—Hannibal besieges Saguntum—War declared 
between Rome and Carthage.102 


CHAPTER IX. 

SECOND PUNIC WAR. 

(218-201 B.C.) 

PASSAGE OF THE RHONE AND THE ALPS, B. c. 218 

Preparations of Hannibal—He determines to go by land— 
Numbers of his army—His march through Gaul—His 
passage of the Rhone—Vagueness of ancient writers in 
geographical matters—Passage over Alps selected by Han¬ 
nibal—Route by which he approached it—The first ascent 
—Valley of the Is&re—The main ascent—The summit 
—Hannibal addresses his troops—The descent—Interest 
attaching to the passage of the Alps—Its cost and results 
—The “ War of Hannibal".. 


Contents. 


xv 


CHAPTER X. 

BATTLES OF TREBIA AND TRASIMENE. 

(218-217 B. C.) 

PAGE 

\ Scipio returns from Italy to Gaul—Sempronius recalled 
from Sicily—Battle of the Ticinus—-Hannibal crosses the 
Po—He is joined by the Gauls—Retreat of Scipio to the 
Trebia—Hannibal selects his ground and time—Battle of 
the Trebia--Results of the victory—Hannibal crosses the 
Apennines—The marshes of the Arno—Position of the 
Roman armies—Flaminius and his antecedents—Des¬ 
pondency at Rome—Resolution of Flaminius—He fol¬ 
lows Hannibal from Arretium—Livy and Polybius com¬ 
pared—Position chosen by Hannibal—Battle of the 
Trasimene lake —Death of Flaminius.126 


CHAPTER XI. 

HANNIBAL OVERRUNS CENTRAL ITALY. 

(217-216 B. C.) 

News of the Trasimene defeat reaches Rome—Measures of 
the Roman Senate—Hannibal marches into Picenum— 
Sends despatches to Carthage—He arms his troops in 
the Roman fashion—Advance of the Dictator Fabius— 

His policy—Discontent of his troops—Hannibal ravages 
Samnium and Campania—Beauty and wealth of Cam¬ 
pania—Continued inaction of Fabius—He tries to entrap 
Hannibal but fails—Minucius left in command—Is raised 
to equal rank with Fabius—Is saved from disaster by 
him—Services of Fabius to Rome. .... 142 


XVI 


Contents. 


CHAPTER XII. 

BATTLE OF CANNES, CHARACTER OF HANNIBAL. 

(216 B. C.) 

PAGE 

Energy and spirit of the Romans—The rival armies face each 
other at Cannae—Nature of the ground—The double 
command of Afmilius Paullus and Varro—Anxiety at 
Rome—Dispositions of Hannibal for the battle—Battle 
of Cannae -Number of the slain—Panic at Rome—Mea¬ 
sures of the Senate—Course of the war—Was Hannibal 
right or wrong in not advancing on Rome now?—Great¬ 
ness of Hannibal and of Rome—Character and genius of 
Hannibal—His ascending series of successes—His in¬ 
fluence over men—Sources of our knowledge of him—• 
Charges against him —Roman feeling towards him—• 
Change in character of war after Cannae. . 152 

CHAPTER XIII. 

REVOLT OF CAPUA. SIEGE OF SYRACUSE. 

(216-212 B. C.) 

Capua revolts—Marcellus—Hannibal winters at Capua— 
Latin colonies still true to Rome—Great exertions of 
Rome -Hannibal negotiates with Syracuse, Sardinia, and 
Macedon—His position at Tifata—Fabius and Marcellus 
Consuls—The tide turns against Hannibal—He gains 
possession of Tarentum—The war in Sicily—Importance 
of Syracuse—Its siege and capture—Its fate. . . 171 

CHAPTER XIV. 

SIEGE OF CAPUA AND HANNIBAL'S MARCH ON ROME. 

(212-208 B. C.) 

Importance of war in Spain—Successes and death of the two 
Scipios—Renewed activity of Hannibal—Siege of Capua 
—Hannibal attempts to relieve it—His march on Rome— 


Contents. 


XVli 


Fate of Capua—Continued superiority of Hannibal in the 
field—Death of Marcellus—Influence of family traditions 
at Rome—Patriotism of Romans—Latin colonies show 
symptoms of exhaustion..182 

CHAPTER XV. 

BATTLE OF THE METAURUS. 

(207 B.C.) 

The approach of Hasdrubal from Spain—His messengers fail 
to find Hannibal—Brilliant march of Nero— Battle of the 
Metaurus—Triumph and brutality of Nero . . . 193 

CHAPTER XVI. 

P. CORNELIUS SCIPIO. 

(210-206 B.C.) 

Scipio in Spain—His early history—His character and influ¬ 
ence—Made proconsul —Takes New Carthage Cartha¬ 
ginians finally driven out of Spain.199 

CHAPTER XVII. 

THE WAR IN AFRICA; BATTLE OF ZAMA. 

(206-202 B.C.) 

Scipio returns to Rome and is elected Consul—Receives leave 
to invade Africa—Goes to Sicily— His doings and diffi¬ 
culties there—Sails for Africa—Massinissa and Syphax— 
Roman ignorance of Carthage—The fall of Carthage, how 
far a matter of regret—Siege of Utica—Scipio’s command 
longed—He burns the Carthaginian camps—Sophonisba 
—The Carthaginian peace party—Sons of Hamilcar re¬ 
called to Africa—Mago obeys the summons—Hannibal 
obeys it—Joy in Italy—First operations of Hannibal in 
Africa—Battle of Zama—Dignity of Hannibal—Terms of 
peace—Results of the war—Alternative policies open to 

Rome.• 207 

B 


Contents. 


xviii 


CHAPTER XVIII. 

CARTHAGE AT THE MERCY OF ROME. 

(2OI-150 B.C.) 

- ] 
-Deterioration of Roman character—Condition of Italy—Con¬ 
dition of Rome—Condition of Roman provinces—Rapid 
conquest of the East—Reforms introduced by Hannibal 
at Carthage—Romans demand his surrender—His exile 
and wanderings—His schemes, his sufferings, and his 
death—Death of Scipio—Treatment of Carthage by Ro¬ 
mans and Massinissa. 


CHAPTER XIX. 

DESTRUCTION OF CARTHAGE. 

(149-146 B.C.) 

Topography of Carthage—Causes of its obscurity—Changes 
made by nature and man—The peninsula—The fortifica¬ 
tions— The Taenia — The harbours—Resolve of Rome 
respecting Carthage—Treachery of Romans—Scene at 
Utica—Scene at Carthage—The Roman attack fails—Re¬ 
peated failures and losses—Scipio ^Emilianus—His cha¬ 
racter and connections—He takes the Megara—Siege of 
the city proper —Scipio’s mole and the new outlet—Con¬ 
tradictions in Carthaginian character—Scipio attacks the 
harbour quarter—He takes Nepheris—The final assault— 

The three streets—The Byrsa—Fate of the city and its 
inhabitants—Curse of Scipio--Unique character of the 
fall of Carthage—Its consequences—Subsequent cities on 
its site—Final destruction by the Arabs .... 239 


Concerns. 


XIX 


CHAPTER XX. 

CARTHAGE AS IT IS. 

PAG* 

Interest of a visit to Carthage—Nature of impressions thence 
derived—Its topography—The Goletta and the Taenia— 
Djebel Khawi and the Necropolis—Sanctity of burying- 
place among Semitic races—Ras Sidi Bu Said and its 
sanctity—Scene of misadventure of Mancinus—Hill of 
St. Louis the ancient Byrsa—Gulf of Tunis and Peninsula 
of the Dakhla—Lake of Tunis and plain of Carthage— 

The aqueduct—Utica—Obliteration of Punic City—The 
“smaller cisterns”—The larger cisterns—Excavations of 
Dr. Davis — Excavations of M. Beule—Remains of ancient 
harbours—Buildings beneath the sea—Oriental character 
of Tunis—The neighbourhood of Tunis—Characteristics 
of the Arab—Conclusion.263 


MAPS. 


TAGS 

The CARTHAorn ian Empire and Dependencies . . 9 
Sicily, to illustrate the First Punic War . . 30 

Battle of Ecnomus. . . 51 

Italy, to illustrate the Second Punic War . . it ^ 

Battle of Trebia.131 

Battle of Trasimene.139 

Battle of Cannae.159 

Carthage and its Neighbourhood .... 239 

Plan of Harbours at Carthage.243 



ROME AND CARTHAGE: 

THE PUNIC WARS. 


CHAPTER I. 


CARTHAGE. 


It was well for the development and civilization of the 
ancient world that the Hebrew fugitives from Egypt were 
not able to drive at once from the whole Ch ^ 

coast of Syria its old inhabitants ; for the tics of the 

t c ,1 ^ *,1 r Phoenicians. 

accursed race of the Canaanites whom, for 
their licentious worship and cruel rites, they were bidden 
to extirpate from Palestine itself, were no other than 
those enterprizing mariners and those dauntless colo¬ 
nists who, sallying from their narrow roadsteads, com¬ 
mitted their fragile barks to the mercy of unknown seas, 
and, under their Greek name of Phoenicians, explored 
island and promonotory, creek and bay, from the coast 
of Malabar even to the lagunes of the Baltic. From 
Tyre and Sidon issued those busy merchants who car¬ 
ried, with their wares, to distant shores the rudiments of 
science and of many practical arts which they had ob- 



2 


Rome and Carthage. 


tained from the far East, and which, probably, they but 
half understood themselves. It was they who, at a 
period antecedent to all contemporary historical records, 
introduced written characters, the foundation of all high 
intellectual development, into that country which was 
destined to carry intellectual and artistic culture to the 
highest point which humanity has yet reached. It was 
they who learned to steer their ships by the sure help of 
the Polar Star, while the Greeks still depended on the 
Great Bear; it was they who rounded the Cape of 
Storms, and earned the best right to call it the Cape of 
Good Hope, 2,000 years before Vasco de Gama. Their 
ships returned to their native shores bringing with them 
sandal wood from Malabar, spices from Arabia, fine 
linen from Egypt, ostrich plumes from the Sahara. 
Cyprus gave them its copper, Elba its iron, the coast of 
the Black Sea its manufactured steel. Silver they 
brought from Spain, gold from the Niger, tin from the 
Scilly Isles, and amber from the Baltic. Where they 
sailed, there they planted factories which opened a cara¬ 
van trade with the interior of vast continents hitherto 
regarded as inaccessible, and which became inaccessible 
for centuries again when the Phoenicians disappeared 
from history. They were as famous for their artistic 
skill as for their enterprize and energy. Did the great¬ 
est of the Jewish kings desire to adorn the Temple 
which he had erected to the Most High in the manner 
least unworthy of Him ? A Phoenician king must sup¬ 
ply him with the well-hewn cedars of his stately Leb¬ 
anon, and the cunning hand of a Phoenician artisan 
must shape the pillars and the layers, the oxen and the 
lions of brass, which decorated the shrine. Did the 
King of Persia himself, in the intoxication of his pride, 
command miracles to be performed, boisterous straits to 


The Phoenicians and their Territory. 


3 


be bridged, or a peninsula to become an island ? It was 
Phoenician architects who lashed together the boats that 
were to connect Asia with Europe, and it was Phoenician 
workmen who knew best how to economize their toil in 
digging the canal that was to transport the fleet of 
Xerxes through dry land, and save it from the winds 
and waves of Mount Athos. The merchants of Tyre 
were, in truth, the princes, and her traffickers the hon¬ 
ourable men, of the earth. Wherever a ship could pen¬ 
etrate, a factory be planted, a trade developed or created, 
there we find these ubiquitous, these irrepressible Phoe¬ 
nicians. 

We know well what the tiny territory of Palestine has 
done for the religion of the world, and what the tiny 
Greece has done for its intellect and its art; 
but we are apt to forget that what the Phceni- Size of their 

r 0 # territory. 

cians did for the development and inter¬ 
communication of the world was achieved by a state 
confined within narrower boundaries still. In the days 
of their greatest prosperity, when their ships were to be 
found on every known and on many unknown seas, the 
Phoenicians proper of the Syrian coast remained content 
with a narrow strip of fertile territory, squeezed in be¬ 
tween the mountains and the sea, of the length of some 
thirty and of the average breadth of only a single mile ! 
And if the existence of a few settlements beyond these 
limits entitles us to extend the name of Phoenicia to 
some 120 miles of coast, with a plain behind it which 
sometimes broadened out into a sweep of a dozen miles, 
was it not sound policy, even in a community so en¬ 
larged, to keep for themselves the gold they had so 
hardly won, rather than lavish it on foreign mercenaries 
in the hope of extending their sway inland, or in the 
vain attempt to resist by force of arms the mighty mon- 


4 


Rome and Carthage. 


archs of Egypt, of Assyria, or of Babylon ? Their 
strength was to sit still, to acknowledge the titular su¬ 
premacy of anyone who chose to claim it, and then, when 
the time came, to buy the intruder off. 

The land-locked sea, the eastern extremity of which 
washes the shores of Phoenicia proper, connecting as it 
does three continents, and abounding in 

Extent of their , ir . . . . r ... 

commerce and deep gulfs, in fine harbours, and in fertile 

colonization, islands, seems to have been intended by 
Nature for the early development of commerce and col¬ 
onization. By robbing the ocean of half its mystery 
and of more than half its terrors, it allured the timid 
mariner, even as the eagle does its young, from head¬ 
land on to headland, or from islet to islet, till it became 
the highway of the nations of the ancient world; and 
the products of each of the countries whose shores it 
laves became the common property of all. 

But in this general race of enterprise and commerce 
among the nations which bordered on the Mediterra¬ 
nean, it is to the Phoenicians that unquestionably belongs 
the foremost place. In the dimmest dawn of history, 
many centuries before the Greeks had set foot in Asia 
Minor or in Italy, before even they had settled down in 
secure possession of their own territories, we hear of 
Phoenician settlements in Asia Minor and in Greece it¬ 
self, in Africa, in Macedon, and in Spain. There is 
hardly an island in the Mediterranean which has not 
preserved some traces of these early visitors: Cyprus, 
Rhodes, and Crete in the Levant; Malta, Sicily, and the 
Balearic Isles in the middle passage ; Sardinia and Cor¬ 
sica in the Tyrrhenian Sea ; the Cyclades, as Thucydides 
tells us in the mid-y£gean; and even Samothrace and 
Thasos at its northern extremity, where Herodotus, to 
use his own forcible expression, himself saw a whole 


Rise of Carthage. 


5 


mountain “turned upside down ” by their mining energy; 
all have either yielded Phoenician coins and inscrip¬ 
tions, have retained Phoenician proper names and le¬ 
gends, or possess mines, long, perhaps, disused, but 
which were worked as none but Phoenicians ever worked 
them. 

And among the Phoenician factories which dotted the 
whole southern shore of the Mediterranean, from the east 
end of the greater Syrtis even to the Pillars 
of Hercules, there was one which, from a They found 
concurrence of circumstances, was destined 
rapidly to outstrip all the others, to make herself their 
acknowledged head, to become the Queen of the Medi¬ 
terranean, and, in some sense, of the Ocean beyond, and, 
for a space of over a hundred years, to maintain a deadly 
and not unequal contest with the future mistress of the 
world. The history of that great drama, its antecedents, 
and its consequences, forms the subject of this volume. 

The rising African factory was known to its inhabitants 
by the name of Kirjath-Hadeschath, or New Town, to 
distinguish it from the much older settle- 

r tt ■ r , ■ , ■ , , Position, topo- 

ment of Utica, of which it may have been, graphy,and 
to some extent, an offshoot. The Greeks, P°P ulatl0n - 
when they came to know of its existence, called it Kar- 
chedon, and the Romans, Carthago. The date of its 
foundation is uncertain ; but the current tradition refers 
it to a period about a hundred years before the founding 
of Rome. The fortress that was to protect the young 
settlement was built upon a peninsula projecting east¬ 
wards from the inner corner of what is now called the 
Gulf of Tunis, the largest and most beautiful roadstead 
of the North African coast. The topography of Carthage 
will be described in detail at a later period of this history. 
At present it will be sufficient to remark that the city 


6 


Rome and Carthage. 


proper, at the time at which it is best known to us, the 
period of the Punic wars, consisted of the Byrsa or Cita¬ 
del quarter, a Greek word corrupted from the Canaanitish 
Bozra, or Bostra, that is, a fort, and of the Cothon, or 
harbour quarter, so important in the history of the final 
siege. To the north and west of these, and occupying 
all the vast space between them and the isthmus behind, 
were the Megara (Hebrew, Magurim), that is, the 
suburbs and gardens of Carthage, which, with the city 
proper, covered an area twenty-three miles in circumfer¬ 
ence. Its population must have been fully proportionate 
to its size. Just before the third Punic war, when its 
strength had been drained by the two long wars with 
Rome and by the incessant depredations of that chartered 
brigand Massinissa, it contained 700,000 inhabitants, and 
towards the close of the final siege the Byrsa alone was 
able to give shelter to a motley multitude of 50,000 men, 
women, and children. 

Facing the Hermaean promontory (Cape Bon), the 
north-eastern horn of the Gulf of Tunis, at a distance of 
only ninety miles, was the Island of Sicily, 
toSicily 0n which, as a glance at the map, and as the 
sunken ridge extending from one to the 
other still clearly show, must have once actually united 
Europe to Africa. This fair island it was which, crowded, 
even in those early days, with Phoenician factories, 
seemed to beckon the chief of Phoenician cities onwards 
towards an easy and a natural field of foreign conquest. 
This it was which proved to be the apple of fierce dis¬ 
cord for centuries between Carthage and the Greek 
colonies, which soon disputed its possession with her. 
This, in an ever chequered warfare, and at the cost of 
torrents of the blood of her mercenaries, and of untold 
treasures of her citizens, enriched Carthage with the 


Few Records of Carthage. 


7 


most splendid trophies — stolen trophies though they 
were—of Greek art. This, finally, was the chief battle¬ 
field of the contending forces during the whole of the 
first Punic war—in the beginning that is, of her fierce 
struggle for existence with all the power of Rome. 

Such, very briefly, was the city, and such the race 
whose varied fortunes, so far as our fragmentary materials 
allow us, we are about to trace. What were the causes 
of the rapid rise of Carthage; what was the extent of 
her African and her foreign dominions, and the nature 
of her hold upon them ; what were the pe¬ 
culiar excellences and defects of her internal of 6 Cartha- S 
constitution, and what the principles on cords" re " 
which she traded and colonized, conquered 
and ruled ;—to these and other questions some answer 
must be given, as a necessary preliminary to that part 
of her history which alone we can trace consecutively. 
Some answer we must give; but how are we to give it? 
No native poet, whose writings have come down to us, 
has sung of the origin of Carthage, or of her romantic 
voyages; no native orator has described, in glowing 
periods which we can still read, the splendour of her 
buildings and the opulence of her merchant princes. 
No native annalist has preserved the story of her long 
rivalry with Greeks and Etruscans, and no African phi¬ 
losopher has moralized upon the stability of her institu¬ 
tions or the causes of her fall. All have perished. The 
text of three treaties with Rome, made in the days of her 
prosperity; the log-book of an adventurous Carthaginian 
admiral, dedicated on his return from the Senegal or 
the Niger as a votive offering in the temple of Baal; 
some fragments of the practical precepts of a Carthagi¬ 
nian agriculturist, translated by the order of the utili¬ 
tarian Roman Senate; a speech or two of a vagabond 


8 


Rome and Carthage. 


Carthaginian in the Paenulus of Plautus, which has been 
grievously mutilated in the process of transcribing it into 
Roman letters ; a few Punic inscriptions buried twenty 
feet below the surface of the ground, entombed and 
preserved by successive Roman, and Vandal, and 
Arab devastations, and now at length revealed and de¬ 
ciphered by the efforts of French and English archaeol¬ 
ogists ; the massive substructions of ancient temples ; 
the enormous reservoirs of water ; and the majestic pro¬ 
cession of stately aqueducts which no barbarism has 
been able to destroy—these are the only native or semi¬ 
native sources from which we can draw the outlines of 
our picture, and we must eke out our narrative of Car¬ 
thage in the days of her prosperity, as best we may, 
from a few chapters of reflections by the greatest of the 
Greek philosophers, from the late Roman annalists who 
saw everything with Roman eyes, and from a few but 
precious antiquarian remarks in the narrative of the 
great Greek historian, Polybius, who, with all his love of 
truth and love of justice, saw Carthage only at the mo¬ 
ment of her fall, and was the bosom friend of her de¬ 
stroyer; 

In her origin, at least, Carthage seems to have been 
like other Phoenician settlements, a mere commercial 

factory. Her inhabitants cultivated friendly 
Carthaginian relations with the natives, looked upon 
the U Wes e - m themselves as tenants at will rather than as 
tern Medi- owners of the soil, and, as such, cheerfully 

terranean. 

paid a rent to the African Berbers for the 
ground covered by their dwellings. It was the instinct 
of self-preservation alone which dictated a change of 
policy, and transformed this peace-loving mercantile 
community into the warlike and conquering state, of 
which the whole of the Western Mediterranean was so 


















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THE 

CARTHAGINIAN EMPIRE 




and Dependencies. 


1 dl Carthaginian Dominions 
l O Carthaginian Dependencies 
Cm J Kingdom of Micro 
tZH 3 lamertini 


RUSSELL & 8TRUTHERS, ENG’S, N. Y 




















































Growth of Carthage. 


9 


soon to feel the power. The result of this change of 
policy was that the western half of the Mediterranean 
became—what, at one time, the whole of it had bidden 
fair to be—a Phoenician lake, in which no foreign mgi-' 
chantmen dared to show themselves. It was a vast 
preserve, to be caught trespassing upon which, so 
Strabo tells us, on the authority of Eratosthenes, en¬ 
sured the punishment of instant death by drowning. No 
promontory was so barren, no islet so insignificant, as 
to escape the jealous and ever-watchful eye of the Car¬ 
thaginians. In Corsica, if they could not get any firm 
or extensive foothold themselves, they at least pre¬ 
vented any other state from doing the like. Into their 
hands fell, in spite of the ambitious dreams of Persian 
kings and the aspirations of patriot Greeks, that ‘‘great¬ 
est of all islands,” the island of Sardinia; theirs were the 
vEgatian and the Liparaean, the Balearic and the Pityu- 
sian Isles; theirs the tiny Elba, with its inexhaustible 
supply of metals; theirs, too, Malta still remained, an 
outpost pushed far into the domain of their advancing 
enemies, a memorial of what once had been, and, per¬ 
haps, to the sanguine Carthaginian temperament, an 
earnest of what might be again hereafter. Above all, 
the Phoenician settlements in Spain, at the innermost 
corner of the great preserve, with the adjacent silver 
mines which gave to these settlements their peculiar 
value, were now trebly safe from all intruders. 

Elated, as it would seem, by their naval successes, 
which were hardly of their own seeking, the Carthagin¬ 
ians thought that they might now at last become the 
owners of the small strip of African territory 
which they had hitherto seemed to occupy 
on sufferance only, and they refused the ground-rent 
which, up till now, they had paid to the adjoining tribes. 


xo Rome and Carthage. 

Step by step they enlarged their territories at the ex« 
pense of the natives, till the whole of the rich territory 
watered by the Bagradas became theirs. The nomadic 
tribes were beaten back beyond the river Triton into the 
country named, from the roving habits of its inhabitants, 
Numidia, or into the desert of Tripolis. The agricul¬ 
tural tribes were forced to pay tribute to the conquerors 
for the right of cultivating their own soil, or to shed 
their blood on the field of battle in the prosecution of 
further conquests from the tribes beyond. Nor did the 
kindred Phoenician settlements in the adjoining parts of 
Africa escape unscathed. Utica alone, owing probably 
to her antiquity and to the semi-parental relation in 
which she stood to Carthage, was allowed to retain her 
walls and full equality of rights with the rising power; 
but Hippo Zarytus, and Adrumetum, the greater and the 
lesser Leptis, were compelled to pull down their walls 
and acknowledge the supremacy of the Carthaginian 
city. All along the northern coast of Africa the original 
Phoenician settlers, and probably to some extent, the 
Carthaginians themselves, had intermarried with the 
natives. The product of these marriages was that nu¬ 
merous class of Liby-Phoenicians which proved to be 
so important in the history of Carthaginian colonization 
and conquest; a class which, equi-distant from the Ber¬ 
bers on the one hand and from the Carthaginians proper 
on the other, and composed of those who were neither 
wholly citizens nor yet wholly aliens, experienced the 
lot of most half-castes, and were alternately trusted and 
feared, pampered and oppressed, loved and hated by 
the ruling state. 

One enterprize which was undertaken by the Car¬ 
thaginians in obedience to the fiat of the king of Persia, 
to the lasting good of humanity, failed of its object. 


Constitution of Carthage. . T * 

Xerxes (b. C. 480), advancing with his millions of bar¬ 
barians upon Athens from the east, bade, so it is said, 
Hamilcar advance with his 300,000 merce¬ 
naries upon Syracuse from the west. The Greeks in 
torch of Greek learning and civilization was Sicily falls ' 
to be extinguished at the most opposite ends of the Greek 
world at one and the same moment; but, happily for 
mankind at large, both attempts were foiled. The 
efforts of Xerxes ended in the destruction of the Persian 
fleet at Salamis, and the disgraceful flight of the king to 
Asia; the efforts of Hamilcar ended in his defeat and 
death at Himera, and in the destruction of 150,000 of his 
army; and by a dramatic propriety which is not com¬ 
mon in history, whatever it may be in fiction, this double 
victory of Greek civilization is said to have taken place 
in the same year and on the very same day. 

Let us now turn to the political organization of the 
city which achieved so rapid and marvellous a develop¬ 
ment, and inquire how far it was the effect 
and how far the cause of her prosperity. Constitution 
The constitution of Carthage was not the 
work of a single legislator, as that of Sparta is said to 
have been, nor of a series of legislators like that of 
Athens ; it was rather, like that of England, the growth 
of circumstances and of centuries. It obtained the 
praise of Aristotle for its judicious admixture of the mon¬ 
archical, the oligarchical, and the democratical ele¬ 
ments. The original monarchical constitution—doubt¬ 
less inherited from Tyre — was represented by two 
supreme magistrates called by the Romans Suffetes. 
Their name is the same as the Hebrew Shofetim, mis¬ 
translated in our Bible, Judges. The Hamilcars and 
Hannos of Carthage were, like their prototypes, the 
Gideons and the Samsons of the Book of Judges, not so 


Rome and Carthage. 


i 2 

much the judges, as the protectors and the rulers of 
their respective states. They are compared by Greek 
writers to the two kings of Sparta, and by the Romans 
to their own consuls. Beneath these kings came, in the 
older constitution, a council, called by the Greeks the 
Gerusia, or Council of Ancients, consisting of twenty- 
eight members, over which the Suffetes presided. This 
council declared war, ordered levies of troops, appointed 
generals, sent out colonies. If the council and Suffetes 
agreed, their decision was final; if they disagreed, the 
matter was referred to the people at large. In this and 
in other ways each element of the body politic had its 
share in the administration of the State. 

But the Carthaginian constitution described and 
praised by Aristotle is not the same as that of the Punic 
wars. In the interval which separates the two epochs, 
short as it is, a great change which must have been long 
preparing, had been completed. The Suffetes had 

gradually become little more than an hon- 

of^powerof orar y magistracy. The Senate over which 

the Hundred they presided had allowed the main part of 
Judges. . . . 

their power to slip out of their hands into 
those of another body, called the Judges, or “ The Hun¬ 
dred,” which, if it seemed to be more liberal in point of 
numbers and in conformation, was much more exclusive 
in policy and in spirit. The appeal to the people was only 
now resorted to in times of public excitement, when the 
rulers, by appearing to share power, tried to lessen 
envy, and allowed the citizens to go through the form ol 
registering what, practically, they had already decreed. 
The result was an oligarchy, like that of Venice, clear¬ 
sighted and consistent, moderate, nay, often wise in its 
policy, but narrow in its views, and often suspicious alike 
of its opponents and of its friends. By the old constitu- 


Carthaginian Oligarchy. 


*3 


tion the Senate had the right to control the magistrates; 
but this new body of Judges controlled the Senate, and 
therefore, in reality, the magistrates also. Nor was it 
content to control the Senate; it practically superseded 
it. Its members did not, as a rule, appropriate the 
offices of State to themselves; but they could summon 
their holders before them, and so draw their teeth. No 
Shofete, no senator, no general, was exempt from their 
irresponsible despotism. The Shofetes presided, the 
senators deliberated, the generals fought, as it were, 
with a halter round their necks. The sentences passed 
by the Hundred, if they were often deserved, were often 
also, like those of the dreaded “ Ten ” at Venice, to 
whom they bore a striking resemblance, arbitrary and 
cruel. The unsuccessful general, whether his ill-success 
was the result of uncontrollable circumstances or of cul¬ 
pable neglect, might be condemned to crucifixion ; in¬ 
deed, he often wisely anticipated his sentence by com¬ 
mitting suicide. 

Within the ranks of this close oligarchy first-rate 
ability would seem to have been at a discount. Indeed, 
the exact equality of all within the privi¬ 
leged ranks is as much a principle of oli- Narrowness 

0 r r of oligarchy. 

garchy as is the equal suppression of all that 
is outside of it. Language bears testimony to this in the 
name given alike to the Homoioi of Sparta and the 
" Peers ” of England. It was jealousy, for instance, of 
the superior abilities of the family of Mago, and their 
prolonged pre-eminence in the Carthaginian State, 
which had in the fifth century B. C. cemented the al¬ 
liance between other and less able families of the aris¬ 
tocracy, and so had first given rise to this very institu¬ 
tion of the Hundred Judges; and it was the same mean 
jealousy of all that is above itself, which, afterwards, in 

c 


14 


Rome and Carthage- 


the time of the Punic wars, united, as one man, a large 
part of the ruling oligarchs in the vain effort to control 
and to thwart, and to annoy with a thousand oetty an¬ 
noyances, the one family of consummate ability which 
Carthage then possessed, that noble-minded Barcine 
gens, that “ lion’s brood,” who were brought to the front 
in those troublous times by the sheer force of their 
genius, and who, for three generations, ruled by the best 
of all rights - the right Divine—that of unswerving de¬ 
votion to their country, of the ability to rule, and the 
will to use that ability well. 

If we try, as we cannot help trying, to picture to our¬ 
selves the daily life and personal characteristics of the 

people whose political organization we have 
Social life at j us t described, and to ask, not what the Car- 

Carthage. J 7 9 

thaginians did—for that we know—but what 
they were, we are confronted by the provoking blank in 
the national history which has been already noticed. 
Such few indications as we have are in thorough keep¬ 
ing with the view we have taken of the political exclu¬ 
siveness of the ruling clique. There were public baths ; 
but since no member of the Senate would bathe where the 
people bathed, a special class of baths were set apart for 
their use. There were public messes, as they were called; 
but these were not, as Aristotle supposed, analogous 
to the Spartan Syssitia, an institution intended to foster 
manliness and simplicity of life. The black broth of the 
heroes of Sparta would not have suited the Carthaginian 
nobles, who, clad in their famous cloth, dyed twice over 
with the purple dye of their African, their Spanish, or 
their Tyrian fisheries, and decorated with the finely-cut 
glass beads, the invention of their Phoenician fore¬ 
fathers, fared sumptuously on their abounding flocks 
and herds, or on such delicious fruits as those with which 


Life at Carthage. 


*5 


Cato moved the astonishment and the envy of the senators 
of Rome. The Carthaginian Syssitia were incentives to 
luxury, not checks upon it; they were clubs formed ori¬ 
ginally for social gatherings, and afterwards applied to 
the purposes of political gossip or corruption. Dining- 
tables of the costly citron wood, a single specimen of 
which, Pliny tells us, in the time of the Roman Empire 
cost as much as a broad estate, must have been common 
amongst those who monopolized the commerce of the 
countries where alone the citron-tree grows. Gold and 
silver plate cannot have been rare amongst those who 
controlled the rich mines of Spain, and to whom their 
ambassadors reported, with a touch of scorn, upon their 
return from Rome, that they had been hospitably enter¬ 
tained by senator after senator, but that one service of 
plate had done duty for all. Objects of fine art— 
statues, and paintings, and embroideries—there were in 
abundance at Carthage ; but they were the work of 
Greek, not of Phoenician artists, and^their abundance 
indicated not so much the genius, critical or creative, of 
the Carthaginian community, as the number of Greek 
towns—Selinus and Himera, Gela and Agrigentum— 
sacked in the Sicilian wars.} 

Carthage was, beyond doubt, the richest city of anti¬ 
quity. Her ships were to be found on all known seas, 
and there was probably no important pro¬ 
duct, animal, vegetable, or mineral, of the Wealth and 

0 ' agriculture. 

ancient world, which did not find its way 
into her harbours and pass through the hands of her cit¬ 
izens. But it is remarkable, that while in no city then 
known did commerce rank so high, the noblest citizens 
even of Carthage seem to have left commercial enter- 
prize to those who came next below them in the social 
scale. They preferred to live on their estates as agri- 


Rome and Carthage. 


16 

culturists or country gentlemen, and derived theit 
princely revenues from their farms or their mines, which 
were worked by prodigious gangs of slaves. The culti¬ 
vation of the soil was, probably, nowhere carried on 
with such astonishing results as in the smiling country 
which surrounded Carthage. 

Those members of the Carthaginian aristocracy who 
did not find a sufficient field for their ability in agricul¬ 
ture or in politics, in literature or in commerce, took re¬ 
fuge in the profession of arms, and formed 
And military always the chief ornament, and often the 

Spirit. 

chief strength of the Punic armies. At one 
period, at least, of the history of the state, they formed 
a so-called “ Sacred Band,” consisting of 2,500 citizens, 
who, clad in resplendent armour, fought around the 
person of their general-in-chief, and, feasting from 
dishes of the costliest gold and silver plate, commem¬ 
orated in their pride the number of their campaigns by 
the number of rings on their fingers. 

But the most important factor in the history of a peo¬ 
ple—especially if it be a Semitic people —is its religion. 
The religion of the Carthaginians was what their race, 
their language, and their history would lead us to ex¬ 
pect. It was, with slight modifications, the religion of 
the Canaanites, the religion, that is, which, 
Carthage° f ’ n spite of the purer monotheism of the 
Hebrews and the higher teachings of their 
prophets, so long exercised a fatal fascination over the 
great bulk of the Hebrew race. Baal-Moloch was a 
malignant deity ; he was the fire-god, rejoicing in “hu¬ 
man sacrifices and in parents’ tears.” His worshippers 
gashed and mutilated themselves in their religious 
frenzy. Like Kronos or Saturn—to whom the Greeks 
and Romans aptly enough compared him—he was the 


Carthaginian Religion. 


17 


devourer of his own children. In times of unbroken 
security the Carthaginians neglected (,/ forgot him ; but 
when they were elated by an unK>ked-for victory, or 
depressed by a sudden reverse, tha\. fanaticism which is 
often dormant but never altogether absent from the 
Semitic breast, burst forth into a devouring flame, which 
gratified to the full his thirst for human blood. Tanith 
or Astarte, in the nobler aspects which she sometimes 
presented, as the goddess of wedded love or war, of 
the chase or of peaceful husbandry, was identified by 
the Romans, now with Juno, now with Diana, and now 
again with Ceres; but, unfortunately, it was when they 
identified her with their Venus Ccelestis that they came 
nearest to the truth. Her worship, like that of the 
Babylonian Mylitta, required immorality, nay, conse¬ 
crated it. The “ abomination of the Sidonians ” was 
also the abomination of the Carthaginians. 

But there was one god who stood in such a peculiar 
relation to Carthage, and whose worship seems to have 
been so much more genial and so much 
more spiritual than the resv', that we are Mel earth° f 
fain to dwell upon it as a foil to what has 
preceded. This god was Melcarth, that is Melech-Kir- 
jath, or the king of the city; he is called by the Greeks 
“ the Phoenician Hercules,” and his name itself has 
passed, with a slight alteration, into Greek mythology as 
Melicertes. The city of which he was pre-eminently 
the god was Tyre. There he had a magnificent temple 
which was visited for antiquarian purposes by Herodo¬ 
tus. It contained two splendid pillars, one of pure gold, 
the other, as Herodotus believed, of emerald, which 
shone brilliantly at night, but there was no image of the 
god to be seen. The same was the case in his famous 
temple at Thasos, and the still more famous one at 


i8 


Rome and Carthage. 


Proper names. 


Gades, which contained an oracle, a hierarchy of priests, 
and a mysterious spring which rose and fell inversely 
with the tide, but still no image. At Carthage, Melcarth 
had not even a temple. The whole of the city was his 
temple, and he refused to be localized in any particular 
part of it. He received, there is reason to believe, no 
sacrifices of blood ; and it was his comparatively pure 
and spiritual worship which, as we see repeatedly in 
Carthaginian history, formed a chief link in the chain 
that bound the parent to the various daughter-cities 
scattered over the coasts and islands of the Mediterra¬ 
nean. 

The Carthaginian proper names which have come 
down to us form one among many proofs of the depth 
of their religious feelings ; for they are all, 
or nearly all, compounded with the name 
of one or other of their chief gods. Hamilcar is he 
whom Melcarth protects; Hasdrubal is he whose help is 
in Baal; Hannibal, the Hanniel of the Bible, is the 
grace of Baal; and so on with Bomilcar, Himilco, Eth- 
baal, Maherbal, Adherbal, and Mastanabal. 

A considerable native literature there must have been 
at Carthage, for Mago, a Carthaginian Shofete, did not 
disdain to write a treatise of twenty-eight 
books upon the agricultural pursuits which 
formed the mainstay of his order ; and when the Roman 
Senate, in their fatuous disregard for intellect, gave over 
with careless profusion to their friends, the Berber chiefs, 
the contents of all the libraries they had found in Car¬ 
thage, they reserved for this work the especial honour 
of an authorized translation into Latin, and of a formal 
recommendation of its practical maxims to the thrifty 
husbandmen of Rome. 

It was the one fatal weakness of the Carthaginian 


Literature. 


Numidian Cavalry. 


l 9 


Mercenaries. 


State for military purposes that the bulk of their vast 
armies consisted not of their own citizens, 
nor even of attached and obedient subjects, 
but of foreign mercenaries. There were few countries 
and few tribes in the western world which were not rep¬ 
resented in a Carthaginian army. Money or superior 
force brought to Carthage samples of every nation 
which her fleets could reach. Native Libyan and Liby- 
Phoenicians, Gauls and Spaniards, slingers from the 
far-famed Balearic Isles, Greeks and Ligurians, Vol- 
scians and Campanians, were all to be found within its 
ranks. 

But it was the squadrons of light horsemen drawn 
from all the nomad tribes lying between the Altars of 
the Phileni on the east and the Pillars of 
Hercules on the west, which formed its £Iva\ry ian 
heart. Mounted on their famous barbs, 
with a shield of elephant’s hide on their arm and a 
lion's skin thrown over their shoulders, the only rai¬ 
ment they ever wore by day and the only couch they 
ever cared to sleep on at night; without a saddle and 
without a bridle, or with a bridle only of twisted reeds 
which they rarely needed to touch ; equally remarkable 
for their fearlessness, their agility, and their cunning ; 
equally formidable, whether they charged or made be¬ 
lieve to fly; they were, at once, the strength and the 
weakness, the delight and the despair of the Carthagin¬ 
ian State. Under t he mighty military pining nf — 
bal—with the ardour which he breathed into the feeblest 
and the discipline which he enforced on the most undis¬ 
ciplined of his army—they faced without shrinking the 
terrors of the Alps and the malaria of the mar-hes, and 
they proved invincible against all the power of Rome, 
at the Ticinus and the Trebia, at Thrasimene and at 




20 


Rome and Carthage. 


Cannae ; but, as more often happened, led by an incom¬ 
petent general, treated by him, as not even Napoleon 
treated his troops, like so many beasts for the slaughter, 
and sometimes even basely deserted or betrayed into 
the enemies’ hand, they naturally proved a two-edged 
weapon, piercing the hand that leaned upon it, faithless 
and revengeful, learning nothing and forgetting nothing, 
finding once and again in the direst extremity of Car¬ 
thage their own deadliest opportunity. 

But if the life of the great capitalists of Carthage was 
as brilliant as we have described it, how did it fare with 
the poorer citizens, with those whom we call 
thepoor 11 ° f masses < till we sometimes forget that 

they are made up of individual units? ■ If we 
know little of the rich, how much less do we know of the 
poor of Carthage and her dependencies. The city pop¬ 
ulation, with the exception—a large exception doubtless 
—of those engaged in commerce, well contented, as it 
would seem, like the Romans under the Empire, if 
nothing deprived them of their bread and of their 
amusements, went on eating and marrying and multi¬ 
plying till their numbers became excessive, and then 
they were shipped off by the prudence of their rulers to 
found colonies in other parts of Africa or in Spain. 
Their natural leaders, or, as, probably, more often hap¬ 
pened, the bankrupt members of the aristocracy, would 
take the command of the colony, and obtain free leave, 
in return for their services, to enrich themselves by the 
plunder of the adjoining tribes. To so vast an extent 
did Carthage carry out the modern principle of relieving 
herself of a superfluous population, and at the same 
time of extending her empire, by colonization, that, on 
one occasion, the admiral, Hanno, whose “ Periplus ” 
still remains, was despatched with sixty ships of war of 


Weakness of Carthage- 


21 


fifty oars each, and with a total of not less than 30,000 
half-caste emigrants on board, for the purpose of found¬ 
ing colonies on the shores of the ocean beyond the Pil¬ 
lars of Hercules. 

To defray the expenses of this vast system of explora¬ 
tion and colonization, as well as of their enormous 
armies, the most ruinous tribute was im¬ 
posed and exacted with unsparing rigour w° U kness f 
from the subject native states, and no slight 
one from the cognate Phoenician cities. The taxes paid 
by the natives sometimes amounted to a half of their 
whole produce, and among the Phoenician dependent 
cities themselves we know that the lesser Leptis alone 
paid into the Carthaginian treasury the sum of a talent 
daily. The tribute levied on the conquered Africans 
was paid in kind, as is the case with the Rayahs of Tur¬ 
key to the present day, and its apportionment and col¬ 
lection were doubtless liable to the same abuses and 
gave rise to the same enormities as those of which 
Europe has lately heard so much. Hence arose that 
uni versal disaffection, or rather that dcadlyTiatredron 
the part of her foreign subjects, and even of the Phoe¬ 
nician dependencies, towards Carthage, on which every 
invader of Africa could safely count as his surest sup¬ 
port. Hence the ease with which Agathocles, with his 
small army of 15,000 men, could overrun the open 
country, and the monotonous uniformity with which he 
entered, one after another, two hundred towns, which 
Carthaginian jealousy had deprived of their walls, 
hardly needing to strike a blow. Hence, too, the hor¬ 
rors of the revolt of the outraged Libyan mercenaries, 
supported as it was by the free-will contributions of their 
golden ornaments by the Libyan women, who hated 
their oppressors as perhaps women only can, and which 





22 


Rome and Carthage. 


is known in history by the name of the “War without 
Truce,” or the “ Inexpiable War.” 

It must, however, be borne in mind that the inherent 
differences of manners, language and race between the 
native of Africa and the Phoenician incomer 
were so great; the African was so unirn- 
pressible, and the Phceniciaif'was"s'o little 
dispSse?n:o understand, or to assimilate 
himself to his surroundings, that, even if the Carthaginian 
government had been conducted with an equity, and 
the taxes levied with a moderation which we know was 
far from being the case, a gulf profound and impassable 
must probably have always separ ated the two peoples. 
This was the fundamental, the ineradicable weakness of 
the Carthaginian Empire, and in the■-long-run. outbal¬ 
anced all the advantages obtained for her by her navies, 
her ports, and her well-stocked, treasury ; by the ener¬ 
gies and the valour of her citizens; and by the consum¬ 
mate genius of three, at least, of her generals. It is this, 
and this alone, which in some measure reconciles us to 
the melancholy, nay the hateful termination of the strug¬ 
gle, on the history of which we are about to enter. But 
if, under the conditions of ancient society, and the sav¬ 
agery of the warfare which it tolerated, there was an 
unavoidable necessity for either Rome or Carthage to 
perish utterly, we must admit, in spite of the sympathy 
which the brilliancy of the Carthaginian civilization, the 
heroism of Hamilcar and Hannibal, and the tragic C£n_ 
tast rophe itself. r.al Ua rtlplhrrfv i t-was- welFfordhe human 
race t hat the blow J~e.ll .on Carthage rather than on Rome. 
A universal Carthaginian Empire could have done for 
the world, as far as w e can see, nothing comparable to 
that which the Roman universal Empire did for it. It 
would not have melted down national antipathies ; it 


Was Rome - 
or Carthage 
best fitted / 
for empire?/ 





Greatness of Rome. 


23 


would not have given a common literature or language; 
it would not have prepared the way for a higher civiliza¬ 
tion and an infinitely purer religion. Still less would it 
have built up that majestic fabric of law which forms the 
basis of the legislation of all the states of modern Europe 
and America. 


CHAPTER II. 


ROME. 


It is time now to take a glance at the origin and rise of 
the younger city on the banks of the Tiber, whose pro¬ 
gress towards the dominion of the world 

0 Rome and 

Carthage, and Carthage alone of the states Carthage 
of antiquity, was able seriously to delay. compared. 
The history of Rome is like, and yet unlike, that of Car¬ 
thage. It is like it, for we see in each the growth of a 
civic community which, from very small beginnings, 
under an aristocratic form of government, and with 
slight literary or artistic tastes, acquired first, by the 
force of circumstances, the leadership of the adjoining 
cities, which were akin to her in blood, and subsequently, 
by a far-sighted policy, or by a strong arm, became mis¬ 
tress, not only of them, but, by their aid, of all the tribes 
whom Nature had not cut off from them by the sea, the 
mountains, or the desert. 

But Roman history is intrinsically unlike the Cartha¬ 
ginian, for the greatness of Rome rested not, as did the 
greatness of Cnrthnp-e on her wealth or her' 
commerce, or her colonies, or her narrow 
oligarchy, but on the constitutional progress which, after 
a long struggle, obliterated the mischievous privileges 
of an aristocracy of birth, and raised the commonalty to 
a complete social and political equality with their former 


Contrasted. 




&4 Rome and Carthage. 

lords. It rested on the grand moral qualities whi , \ 
formed the ground-work of the Roman character in its 
best times, earnestness and simplicity of life, reverence 
for the "sanctities of the family relations, reverence for 
the law, reverence for the gods. It rested on the extra¬ 
ordinary concentration of all these qualities, together 
with the soundest practical ability which the state con¬ 
tained, in the Senate, perhaps when taken at its best, the 
noblest deliberative assembly which the world has ever 
seen. And when the two orders in the State had 
become united, and Rome was fairly launched in 
her career as a conquering power her greatness rested 
(how unlike to Carthage!) on the real community 
of interest and of blood which united her to the greater 
number of the Italian tribes that she absorbed; on 
the self-sacrifice which bade her then, and for a long 
time to come, tax not her subjects but herself; on the 
wise precautions which she took to secure their perma¬ 
nent allegiance, partly by isolating them from one 
another, partly by leaving them in some sense to govern 
themselves, or by admitting them to a share, actual or 
prospective, in the Roman citizenship. 

It belongs not to our purpose here to trace the vicissi¬ 
tudes of the long and eventful struggle between the 
privileged Patricians and the unenfranchised Plebs. It 
is incumbent upon us only to note the result of that long 
constitutional conflict; and that grand result was that 
the two orders became indissolubly united, socially and 
politically, into one nation, and were thus prepared, 
whether for good or for evil, to assert their natural su¬ 
premacy over the rest of Italy, and then to conquer the 
world. Nor, again, does it fall within our scope to fol¬ 
low with any degree of minuteness the early progress of 
the Roman arms. It must suffice to trace only so much of 



Character of Roman History. 


2 5 


its outline as may enable us to judge of the true position 
of the conquering city, where a wider field opened 
before her, and she had to face, no longer the petty 
warfare of bordering townships, nor even the collective 
strength of Samnite and Etruscan confederations, but 
Carthage, Macedon, and the East. 

The expulsion of the kings left Rome still a prey to 
internal discord, a circumstance of which her nearest 
neighbours, the Etruscans, wholly alien as 

° J Conquest of 

they were to her in race, were not slow to Etruscans, 
avail themselves. The Etruscan nation, B c 5lJ9 ' 
with its gloomy and mysterious religion, the solemn 
trifling of its augural science, and the cruelty of its 
gladiatorial games, was just then at the height of its 
power by land and sea. Now was its opportunity; the 
fond but soul-stirring romances of the ballad singers and 
annalists of early Rome have not been able wholly to 
disguise the fact that the city itself fell before the arms 
of Porsena. But the triumph of Etruria was not long 
lived. A protracted warfare of 150 years succeeded, in 
which the star of Rome came gradually into the ascend¬ 
ant, and the fall of Veii after a ten years’ siege, and 
still more perhaps, the hurricane of Northern barbarians, 
which just then burst over the fairest plains of Italy, set 
Rome forever free from danger on the side of Etruria. 

But Rome was delivered from the Etruscans only 
(b. C. 390) to find that the Gaul was thundering at her 
gates. The city was burned to the ground, 
her temples desecrated, her historical records And Latlns- 
destroyed, her inhabitants dispersed or slain ; but no 
such ephemeral calamity could shatter the traditions or 
shake the resolution of the Roman people. Rome rose, 
like the phoenix, from her ashes, and started afresh on 
her career of conquest. Her ancient enemies, the 


26 


Rome and Carthage. 


.Equians and Volscians, who, according to the patriotic 
narrative of Livy, had for so many years in the early 
history of the Republic been annually exterminated, and 
had annually revived to be exterminated again, had 
long since died their last death as independent nations. 
The Etruscans were now powerless. The last despe¬ 
rate effort of the Latins to restore, when it was too late 
(b. C. 340-338), the equality of their ancient league, 
was crushed in two campaigns, and Rome now found 
herself face to face with the worthiest antagonists she 
had yet met, the brave and hardy Sabellian race, which 
was akin to herself in blood, which had lately almost 
annexed Campania, and which clung with desperate 
tenacity and with manners that never changed to the 
rugged mountains and the inaccessible defiles of the 
Central and Southern Apennines. The struggle is 
memorable for the deeds of heroism which mark its 
course on either side, for the stubborn resistance and 
chivalrous bravery of the weaker, and, on more than 
one occasion, for the perfidy and the meanness of the 
stronger combatant. But it is yet more remarkable, in 
the eye of him who would read the story of the Punic 
Wars aright, for the light it throws upon the true secret 
of the Roman strength in war. 

Never did the iron resolution and devotion of her 
citizens, never did the unbending consistency of purpose 
T . , and the marvellous self-restraint of the Sen- 

Irresistible . 

advance of ate, display itself more brilliantly. Without 
haste, but without a pause, never elated by 
victory, never depressed by defeat, not caring to overrun 
what they could not hold by force of arms, or to obtain 
by treaty what they could not take without it, willing to 
employ years instead of months, and to conquer by 
inches where they might have conquered by leagues, 


Character of Roman History. 


27 


the Roman Senate, slow but sure, held on the even 
tenour of their course, determined only that where the 
Roman eagles had once set down their talons, there they 
should remain, till the time came to plunge them more 
deeply into the vitals of the foe. Did Samnium at the 
close of the great twenty-two years’ struggle lie, to all 
appearance, prostrate at the feet of Rome, the last of 
her fortresses, Bovianum, in the grasp of the conqueror? 
That conqueror concluded an equitable peace, on terms 
of all but equal alliance, not because she liked to spare 
the conquered—that maxim is to be found only in the 
patriotic imagination of the author of the " ^Eneid "— 
but simply because she did not choose to be brought 
face to face with Southern Italy before she had made 
quite sure of Central. To build a new fortress, to found 
a new military colony, to complete a stage or two more 
of a great military road—if only it could better secure 
what lay behind, and give a vantage ground for future 
operations whenever the time should come—this was 
the strictly practical object of Rome when she took up 
arms; this she kept in view when smarting under a de¬ 
feat ; and what is more remarkable, with this she rested 
content even when flushed with victory. In this way, 
always aiming only at what was feasible, making sure 
of every inch of her way, drawing her iron network of 
colonies and military roads over every district which 
she professed to claim, Rome found herself at length 
(b.C. 293) with not a single danger behind her, and with 
nothing in front save some luxurious Greek cities, and 
some insignificant tribes of Italian aborigines, to sepa¬ 
rate her from that which was at once the object of her 
highest hopes and of her most practical and stern re¬ 
solves, the union of the whole of Italy beneath her sway. 

We have said that there was but one obstacle to the 


Rome and Carthage. 


realization of the aim of Rome; but one other there 
shortly appeared, which, as it had been be- 
Pyrrhus * 1 yond the visible, so was it .necessarily be¬ 
yond the mental horizon of so matter-of-fact 
a body as the Roman Senate. The adventurous king 
of Epirus, whose erratic course it would have required a 
genius like his own to have anticipated, shot down like 
a meteor on the scene. Fired with the am- 
B ' c ' 2 °' bition of emulating his great relative Alex¬ 
ander, and of founding a vast Greek empire in the west 
on the ruins of Italy and Carthage, as Alexander had 
founded his on the ruins of Persia and of Egypt, he 
eagerly seized the opportunity afforded him by the ap¬ 
peal of the frivolous Tarentines, and offered to lead the 
Greek cities of Italy in their opposition to Rome. 

The struggle is rich, above most of those in which 
Rome engaged, in the play of individual character and in 
the traits of knightly chivalry and generosi- 
te J ts charac ' ty, which lend to it a charm which is alto¬ 
gether its own. Even his sober-minded and 
severely practical enemies could scarcely come into 
contact with so high-bred and chivalrous a foe as Pyr¬ 
rhus without catching some sparks of his courtesy and 
his enthusiasm ; but the struggle is also memorable as 
the first occasion in which Greece and Rome met in 
the shock of battle. Here for the first time might be seen 
the Roman legion meeting the phalanx of Macedon ; a 
national militia arrayed against highly trained and vet¬ 
eran mercenaries ; individual military genius against 
collective mediocrity. For a moment fortune seemed to 
waver, or even to incline in favour of the adventurer; 
but she could not waver long. The victories of Heraclea 
and Asculum must have made the name of Pyrrhus a 
name to be spoken with bated breath even in the Roman 


Discomfiture of Pyrrhus. 


29 


Senate ; and the lightning rapidity with which he swept 
Sicily from end to end, cooping the Mamertines in Mes- 
sana on the extreme east, and the Phoenicians in Lily- 
bseum in the extreme west, must have made his name a 
name of terror even among the burghers of Carthage. 
But the proud answer returned by the Roman Senate to 
the embassy of Pyrrhus after his first victory, that Rome 
never negotiated so long as an enemy was on Italian 
soil, must have at once opened the eyes of the Epirot 
king to the hopeless nature of the enterprise he had un¬ 
dertaken, and marked triumphantly the goal to which 
centuries of tempered aspiration and of impetuous resolve 
had raised the Latin city. To the Roman mind an ideal 
which could not be realized was no ideal at all, and the 
Romans had now realized their highest ideal to an extent 
which entitled them to take a wholly new point of de¬ 
parture. 

Pyrrhus disappeared from the western world almost 
as rapidly as he had descended on it, crying with his last 
breath, half in pity, half in envy, “ How fair 
a battle-field we are leaving to the Romans Rome and 
and Carthaginians!” He spoke too truly. f^ce'to face 
The arena was already cleared of its lesser 
combatants, and for some few years there was, as it were, 
the hush of expectation, the audible silence of suspense, 
while mightier combatants were arming for the fray, and 
the great duel was pieparing of which a hundred years 
would hardly see the termination. 

D 


3® 


Rome and Carthage. 


CHAPTER III. 
FIRST PUNIC WAR. 


(264-262 B.C.) 

Hardly had Pyrrhus turned his back for the last time 
on Italy when the first note of war between the Romans 
and the Carthaginians, who had so recently 
battle-field of formed an alliance against him, was sound- 
Carthagi'nian. ed - It: came . as was to be expected, from 
that fair island which, by its position, seemed 
to belong half to Europe, half to Africa, and from that 
point in it which lay actually within sight of Rhegium, 
the town which was, as yet, the farthest outpost of the 
Roman alliance. For more than a century past Greeks 
and Carthaginians had been contending, with varying 
success, for the possession of the island. Few towns of 
any importance within its limits had escaped destruction, 
fewer still had escaped a siege, and many had been 
taken and retaken almost as many times as there had 
been campaigns. On the whole, in spite of the efforts 
of able leaders like Dionysius the Tyrant, Timoleon, and 
Agathocles, fortune had favored the Carthaginians; and 
the power of Syracuse, the head of the Greek states, was 
now confined to the south-eastern corner of the island. 

But there was one town in the island, and that an all- 
important one from its geographical position, which had 
by a strange destiny ceased to be Greek without becom¬ 
ing Carthaginian, and, after outraging Greek and Car¬ 
thaginian alike, and rousing their active hostility, had 
now, to make matters better, appealed for aid to a third 
power which was destined to prove mightier than either. 









































History and Importance of Sicily. < 31 


When Agathocles, tyrant of Syracuse, died, his mer¬ 
cenary troops were disbanded, and a body of them, on 
their way back to Campania, their native 
country, treacherously seized Messana, at Messana 

which had entertained them hospitably. B ' c 289 ' 

They expelled or slew the male inhabitants, divided 
their wives and children, and, calling themselves the 
children of Mamers, or Mars, proceeded to justify their 
name by plundering or harrying all the surrounding 
country. Such outrages could not be overlooked by the 
Carthaginians. Still less could they pass unnoticed by 
the young king Hiero, who had lately obtained the va¬ 
cant throne of Syracuse by the best of titles, the free 
choice alike of his comrades in arms and of his fellow- 
citizens ; and he proceeded to lay siege to the town. 
The Mamertine councils were divided. It was clear that 
without allies they would not long hold out against the 
powerful foes whose deadly hostility they had provoked. 
One party among them was for surrendering the place 
to the Carthaginians to keep out the Syracusans ; the 
other was for invoking the Romans to keep out both 
alike. 

Never was a question fraught with more important is¬ 
sues, moral and political, brought before the Roman 
Senate; and never did they shirk their re¬ 
sponsibility more shamefully. It is not per¬ 
haps so easy to see what was the right 
thing to do as it is to see that what the Ro¬ 
man Senate did was the very worst thing 
could do. Were they, on the one hand, to 
protect Italians who appealed to them avowedly as the 
head of the Italian confederation for aid against the 
Greeks and Carthaginians, and to look calmly on while 
the city of Messana fell into the hands of the Cartha- 


Moral ques¬ 
tions in¬ 
volved in 
appeal of 
Mamertines. 

that they 
refuse to 


3 2 


Rome and Carthage. 


ginians to be used by them as a standing menace to 
their power and a vantage ground in the great conflict 
which could not now be far distant ? Or were they, on 
the other hand, to lull their consciences to sleep, to turn 
round upon Hiero, their ally, who had recently lent 
them his aid in getting rid of the lawless banditti who 
had seized Rhegium as the Mamertines had seized Mes- 
sana, and to take under their special protection a band 
of cutthroats on one side of the straits, while they had 
just scourged and beheaded every member of a similar, 
and perhaps a less guilty band, on the other ? It was a 
question beset with difficulties. National honour and 
common gratitude pointed clearly in one direction; 
ambition and immediate interest pointed as clearly in 
another, and the Roman Senate took the most ignoble 
course of all open to it, that of shifting the responsibility 
from their own shoulders to that of the people assembled 
in their Comitia. The consuls Appius Claudius Caudex 
and M. Fulvius Flaccus were ambitious men, eager for 
war at any price. It was easy for them to raise a patri¬ 
otic cry of Italians against foreigners, and to hold otff 
visions of assignations of public land amongst the rich 
fields of Sicily to the multitude whose appetite for such 
booty had been recently whetted by the large distribu¬ 
tions of land in Italy. The decision of the people was 
not doubtful; and~the most momentous resolution ever 
arrived at by the Romans was taken without either the 
definite sanction or the explicit disapproval of the Sen¬ 
ate (b. c. 264). It was possible for the Senate, perhaps, 
by such paltry conduct to deprive themselves of some of 
the credit which might ultimately be won by the war. 
It was not possible to relieve themselves of the shame 
of its commencement. 

Nor was the step now taken less serious from a poli- 


Question of Peace or War. 33 

tical than from a moral point of view, for, in truth, upon 
the passing of the narrow arm of sea which 
rages between Italy and Sicily hinged the Political 
future destinies of both countries ; and not 
of these alone, but of the ancient civilized world. Hith¬ 
erto the policy or the Roman Senate had been definite 
and strictly practical, and had not carried them beyond 
the horizon of Italy proper. If they had owned ships of 
war at all, they had been of a small size and built upon 
an antique model. Now, for the first time, they were 
about to set foot beyond the seas, to embark upon a pol¬ 
icy the course of which it would no longer rest with them 
to determine; to claim, without ships of their own, from 
the greatest of naval powers, a portion of the island 
which had for centuries been looked upon as her pecu¬ 
liar appanage. Some clear-sighted men there must have 
been among the Roman senators who recoiled from the 
results of what they had done, or rather from the results 
of what they had refrained, through moral cowardice, 
from doing ; but their voices were not heard, and active 
operations began. War, indeed, against Carthage was 
not formally declared, for the diplomatists of either na¬ 
tion had yet to go through the solemn farce which usually 
precedes such a declaration by raking up forgotten 
grievances or inventing new ones to justify the resolution 
which had already been taken ; but orders were given at 
once to relieve Messana. 

The command was committed to Appius Claudius 
(b. c. 264), more easy work being found for his colleague, 
Flaccus, nearer home. The want of ships 
of war, and even of transports—for, by a cross 

strange short-sightedness, the Romans had 
allowed such ships as they had to fall into decay at the 
very time when they most needed them—was met by 


34 


Rome and Carthage. 


I 

borrowing them from the Greek cities of Italy, Tarentum, 
Locri, Velia, and Neapolis ; but a more serious difficulty 
occurred when Claudius, the legate of the consuls and 
forerunner of the Roman army, appeared at Rhegium. 
Things had taken an unexpected turn atMessana. The 
party favourable to Carthage had got the upper hand, 
and the Carthaginian fleet was riding at anchor in the 
harbour, while a Carthaginian garrison was in possession 
of the citadel. Here was an awkward predicament for 
the Romans; but C. Claudius was, like most of his family, 
a man of energy and audacity. He crossed the straits at 
the peril of his life, invited the admiral, Hanno, to a con¬ 
ference, and then, in defiance of the law of nations and 
of honour, took him prisoner, and allowed him to purchase 
his liberty and life only by the surrender of the citadel. 
The Mamertines, who were equally ready to follow any¬ 
one who seemed able to promise them the lives which 
by their crimes they had so justly forfeited, were now 
besieged in Messana from the north side of the city by a 
second Hanno, whom the Carthaginians had sent out 
to replace the first, while Hiero attacked it from the 
south. 

Such was the condition of affairs when Appius Clau¬ 
dius himself appeared with his army upon the scene. 

How he managed to cross the straits with 
First . 20,000 men in the face of an enemy whose 

campaign. ' . ' 

proud boast it was that without their leave 
no Roman could even bathe his hands in the sea, we do 
not know. But cross them he did, and by a double vic¬ 
tory on two successive days he succeeded in raising the 
siege, and, after ravaging the country in every direction, 
pitched his camp under the walls of Syracuse and pre¬ 
pared to besiege Hiero in his own capital. Here he 
suffered far more from the malaria of the marshes of the 


The Second Campaign. 


35 


Anapus than from any active hostility of Hiero; and 
when the Romans thought fit to retreat towards Messana 
from so unhealthy a region, and were followed closely 
by the Syracusans, Hiero found that the troops of the 
rival armies were more disposed to meet in friendly 
gatherings at the outposts than in hostile array in the 
battle-field. 

So ended the first campaign. With one small army 
the Romans had already attained the ostensible objects 
of the war. The Mamertines had been re¬ 
lieved, the protectorate of Rome over them Second 

r campaign. 

asserted, much booty had been gained, the 
Carthaginians had been driven back towards the north¬ 
west, and the Syracusans towards the south-east, of the 
island. But Rome was not content to stop here. The 
horizon of the Senate had once more expanded with 
their achievements ; and, no longer content with secur¬ 
ing the corner of Sicily nearest to themselves, they had 
conceived the design of stripping Carthage and Syra¬ 
cuse alike of so much of their Sicilian possessions as 
would render them for ever innocuous neighbours. The 
second campaign was not less successful than the first. 
There was now no rumour of disturbance in the neigh¬ 
bourhood of Rome ; and the two consuls, M. Octacilius 
and M. Valerius, were able to cross together into Sicily 
with their united armies amounting to 35,000 men. 
They met no serious resistance; fifty towns belonging to 
Hiero or the Carthaginians submitted to them ; and 
Hiero himself, consulting, partly, no doubt, the wishes 
of his subjects, partly his own feelings of hatred towards 
the hereditary oppressors of his country, turned from the 
setting to the rising sun and made overtures of peace to 
Rome. The Romans were keenly alive to the advan¬ 
tages which an alliance with Syracuse would bring them 


Rome and Carthage . 


while they were waging war in the interior of the island, 
and Hiero agreed to pay a war contribution of 200 talents 
and to surrender several of his towns. He became 
henceforward to the end of his long life and reign, to 
ill appearance, the grateful, and certainly the faithful 
and the trusted ally of Rome. Under his wise and 
beneficent rule, Syracuse, though war was surging round 
her by land and sea, enjoyed a degree of prosperity and 
of internal quiet to which, it may perhaps be said, she 
had been a stranger for two centuries before, and which 
she has never enjoyed since. 

But where were the Carthaginians all this time ? Two 
campaigns had been fought and won, and they had no¬ 
where yet shown themselves in force. They 
ness of Car- had allowed themselves, with hardly a 
thagmians. struggle, to be swept from the larger half of 
the island. Would they allow themselves to be swept 
without resistance from the remainder ? The truth is 
that they were neither inactive nor cowardly. They 
were simply, owing to the defects of their military sys¬ 
tem, unprepared ; and they were all this time straining 
every nerve to raise a force in Africa, in Liguria, in 
Spain, and in Gaul, which they hoped might eventually 
be able to strike a vigorous blow and to retrieve their 
fortunes. 

About half way between the promontories ofLilybseum 
and Pachynus, and drawn back a mile or so from the 
southern coast, was the important city of Agrigentum. 
It had once boasted a population of 200,000 souls—a 
fact to which the size and extent of its ma- 
Agngentum. j est j c ru ; ns s till bear witness—and though 
its ruthless destruction by the Carthaginians (b. C. 405), 
and the misgovernment of domestic tyrants had shorn 
it of much of its grandeur and prosperity, it had been 


Siege of Agrigentum. 


37 


refounded by Timoleon, and was still at the time of the 
First Punic War the second Greek city in Sicily, and 
was able to give shelter to a garrison of 50,000 men. 
Here Hannibal, son of Gisco, concentrated the forces 
which had been gathered from such distant countries; 
here he determined to make a stand in the field, and 
behind its bulwarks, after collecting vast stores of pro¬ 
visions and of materials for war, he was prepared, if 
need be, to stand a siege. Hither also came all the 
forces which the Roman Senate thought necessary to 
deal with a foe who during two campaigns had seemed 
anxious only to keep himself out of sight—a small army, 
so it is said, of two legions only ! 

The consuls of the year, L. Postumius and Q. Mami- 
lius (b. c. 262), pitched their camp eight stadia from the 
town, and imprudently sent out their troops 
in large numbers to forage in the surround¬ 
ing country. Hannibal seized the opportunity, and only 
the heroism of some Roman pickets who, to allow time 
for the foragers to get back into the camp, died to a 
man, fighting bravely at their posts, saved the Romans 
from disaster. Both sides now displayed greater cau¬ 
tion. The Carthaginians contented themselves with 
iiarassing the Romans with missiles from a distance, 
while the Romans broke up their army into two separate 
camps, connected by a double line of entrenchments— 
the one to protect them against the sallies of the besieged, 
the other to guard against possible dangers from the 
rear. The town of Erbessus, a few miles to the north, 
supplied them with abundant provisions, and seemed to 
remove famine, at all events, from the lists of contin¬ 
gencies to which they might be exposed. In this state 
of things five months passed away, and to all appear¬ 
ance the siege was no nearer a successful termination 


38 


Rome and Carthage. 


than at the beginning ; but provisions had begun to fail 
in the closely-packed quarters of the defenders, and in 
deference to the urgent solicitations of Hannibal, Hanno 
was sent to Sicily with a new army, and with oiders, if 
possible, to compel the Romans to raise the siege. 
Making Heraclea his headquarters, Hanno managed to 
surprise Erbessus, and so cut off the supplies of the ene¬ 
my. The Romans now found themselves in the position 
of besieged rather than besiegers, and pestilence as well 
as famine was at work in their lines. 

Decisive operations could not now be long delayed. 
In a preliminary engagement the Roman horse expe¬ 
rienced, for the first time, the superiority of 
Its capture. the famous Numidian light cavalry; but in 
the battle which ensued, the motley Carthaginian infan¬ 
try found that they were, as yet, no match for the sol¬ 
diers of the legion. Fifty elephants—wild beasts Poly¬ 
bius, with an air of horror, still calls them—fought on 
the side of the Carthaginians, a number many times as 
great as that which a few years before, in the time of 
Pyrrhus, had carried dismay and confusion into the 
Roman ranks; but on this occasion, as often afterwards, 
elephants were found to be a two-edged weapon, which 
might be fatal to the hand that wielded it. Thirty of the 
fifty were killed, and eleven remained alive in the hands 
of the Romans, as vast moving trophies of the victory 
that had been won. Hanno saved a remnant of his 
army by his hasty flight to Heraclea, and Hannibal, 
whom the Romans looked upon as-already within their 
grasp, sheltered by the darkness of a winter’s night, and 
helped by the energy of despair, made a last effort to 
break through the lines of his victorious foe. The Ro¬ 
mans, overcome with fatigue, or giving the reins to their 
joy, had relaxed their vigilance. With bags stuffed with 


Fall of Agrigentum. 


39 


straw, Hannibal filled up the deep trenches, scaled the 
ramparts, and managed with the effective part of his 
army to pass through the Roman lines unobserved. In 
the morning the enemy, discovering what had happened, 
went through the form of pursuing the retreating Han¬ 
nibal ; but they were more eager to fall on the unhappy 
town which he had abandoned to their mercy. The in¬ 
habitants surrendered at discretion ; but they had to 
undergo all the horrors of a place taken by storm. The 
town was given up to plunder, and 25,000 freemen were 
sold into slavery. Nothing throughout the whole of 
Sicily now remained in the hands of the Carthaginians 
save a few fortresses on its western coasts; and this was 
the precise moment at which, according to the explicit 
statement of Polybius, it first dawned upon the Romans 
that they had embarked upon a war the true and only 
object of which must be to eject the Carthaginians alto¬ 
gether from the island. 


CHAPTER IV. 

FIRST ROMAN FLEET. BATTLES OF MYLAJ AND ECNOMUS. 
(262-256 B. C.) 

If the resolution now come to by Rome was to be carried 
out, it was clear that a complete change in the conduct 
of the war would be necessary. The Car- , . . 

Carthaginian 

thaginians had at length begun to put forth naval supre- 
their real strength, and to assert the supre- macy- 
macy over the seas, which had, in fact, never ceased to 
belong to them. With a fleet of sixty ships they coasted 
round Sicily, and by sheer terror, without striking a blow, 
brought back to their allegiance many towns which had 



40 


Rome and Carthage. 


gone over to Rome. The Romans might retain their 
grip on the interior of the island, but the coasts, it was 
clear, would belong to Carthage so long as she remained 
mistress of the seas. Nor was this all. By making fre¬ 
quent descents at distant points on the Italian coast, the 
Carthaginian fleet kept the inhabitants of the seaboard 
in a state of constant alarm, which it was quite beyond 
the power of any land forces raised by the Italians them¬ 
selves to allay; for by the nature of the case the Cartha¬ 
ginians, choosing like the Northmen centuries after¬ 
wards, their own place and time, were able to destroy a 
town, or to harry a district, before alarm could be given 
to the nearest military station. It was apparent that the 
war might go on for ever, each of the combatants being 
able to annoy and injure, but not to paralyze or destroy 
the other, unless something should occur to change 
the conditions under which it was being carried on. The 
Carthaginians wanted only, what they had not yet suc¬ 
ceeded in finding, a first-rate general, to enable them to 
make a descent in force in Italy, and so make Rome trem¬ 
ble for her own safety. The Romans wanted only an 
efficient fleet to enable them to meet Carthage on her 
own element, and then to transfer the contest to Africa. 
The all-important question was which would be found 
first. A life-and-death struggle generally finds out, and 
brings to the front, in spite of all artificial obstacles, a 
true military genius, even amongst a people whose col¬ 
lective genius is not military ; but it has very rarely been 
known to change the whole character of a people at once, 
to transform land-lubbers into seamen, and what is more 
extraordinary still, to enable them to cope on equal 
terms with the greatest naval power of the time. The 
chances therefore were, so far, not in favour of Rome. 

But we must beware of indulging in the exaggerations 


Roman Naval Affairs. 


4i 


in which it was natural enough for Polybius and other 
historians of the time to indulge, in their ad¬ 
miration of the energy of Rome. What the . 

Romans did was wonderful enough without 
the addition of a single fictitious detail to make it more 
so. It may be true, as Polybius says, that at the outbreak 
of the war Rome had no decked ships, no ships of war, 
no, not even a lembus—a small ship’s boat with a sharp 
prow—-which they could call their own. But that the 
Romans were not so wholly ignorant of naval affairs as 
the ludicrous picture of a hundred batches of would-be 
sailors, training themselves to row on the sand, from 
scaffolds, would at first suggest, is clear from the fact 
that Rome had in the early days of the Republic fitted 
out ships with three banks of oars to keep in order 
piratical neighbours like the Antiates or the Etruscans ; 
that there were magistrates, called Duumviri navales, 
who, from time to time, were appointed for the express 
purpose of repairing the fleet; and that the Carthaginians 
themselves had thought it worth their while repeatedly 
to form a commercial treaty with the Romans, restricting 
carefully their mutual rights and duties. Still the Romans 
had never been a really maritime or commercial people ; 
they did not love the sea, much less had they been a 
naval power; and how were they to become so all at 
once ? 

The question was beset with difficulties. Triremes 

no doubt they might borrow from the Greek cities of 

Italy, aSfthey had done once before; but 

these would no more face the bulky mon- Difficulties in 

J creating a fleet. 

sters, called quinqueremes, which now 
formed the Carthaginian ships of the line, than an Eng¬ 
lish revenue cutter could board a fr’gate. The Romans 
must have felt all the needs, upon a vaster scale, which 


42 


Rome and Carthage. 


dawned upon a people as land-loving and as exclusive 
as themselves, when the conquest of Ezion Geber 
opened to the untravelled Israelites the navigation of the 
Red Sea, and the unknown possibilities of the East be¬ 
yond it. But to the Hebrew subjects of King Solomon 
a way out of the difficulty was open which was not avail¬ 
able to the Romans now. The gold of Solomon was 
able to procure Phoenician shipwrights who could con¬ 
struct, and Phoenician mariners who could navigate and 
steer, his vessels among the dangerous waters of the 
Red Sea and the Indian Ocean. The descendants of 
these selfsame Phoenicians, the heirs of their traditions 
and of a double portion of their maritime genius, were 
the deadly enemies of Rome ; and the Roman landsmen 
must face the dangers of the sea, not with their aid, but 
against their most strenuous opposition. Again, the 
quinquereme was not merely twice as large as a trireme, 
but was of a different build and construction. It was 
necessary, therefore, to obtain either shipwrights or a 
model from some nation to which such moving castles 
had been long familiar. Here chance was on the side 
of the Romans. A Carthaginian quinquereme had run 
ashore on the coast of Bruttium two or three years before, 
and had fallen into the hands of the Romans. This 
served as the wished-for model; and it is asserted by 
more than one writer, that within sixty days a growing 
wood was felled and transformed into a fleet of a hun¬ 
dred ships of the line and twenty triremes. The next 
difficulty was to find men for the fleet, and when they 
had been found, to train them for their duties. How 
the large number of 30,000 rowers necessary to propel 
the ships, and of 12,000 marines necessary to fight on 
board of them, were raised, in so short a time, from a 
people that was not a seafaring people, we have no pre- 


The New Fleet. 


43 


cise information ; but as soon as they had been got to¬ 
gether, and while the building of the ships was still in 
progress, they went, if we may believe the well-known 
story, through a course of training for the most impor¬ 
tant of their functions, that of rowing in time at the 
voice of the Keleustes, by taking their seats on tiers of 
stages, and by making believe to go through the va¬ 
rious evolutions which would be expected of them. 

Probably never did a fleet set sail under greater diffi¬ 
culties of every kind than did this. The starting timbers 
of the unseasoned wood of which the ships 
were built, and the distressing maladies sa n s . 
which would assuredly befall a herd of 
landsmen who had gone through only the mechanical 
preparation for the sea which we have described, might 
well have made men doubt whether either ships or 
crews would ever live to experience the shock of the 
Carthaginian battle. But we hear nothing of this. Per¬ 
haps after all, the ships were manned in part not by 
Romans, but by Greek and Etruscan mariners ; and we 
know only that hardly were the ships launched when 
they fearlessly set sail (b. c. 261). 

But the skill in naval warfare which the Carthagi¬ 
nians had acquired in centuries could not be learnt by 
Rome in a day. There are many points con¬ 
nected with the equipment and manage- tactics of 

ment of an ancient trireme which have not ancients, 

been cleared up ; but it is certain that even for the sim¬ 
ple manoeuvres practised by the ancients—the embole, or 
charge on the side, and the prosbole , or charge beak to 
beak, the periplus, and the diecplus —there was an in¬ 
calculable difference between trained and untrained row¬ 
ers. It must also be borne in mind that the ancient row¬ 
ers had often to contend in battle against wind and tide 


44 


Rome and Carthage. 


as well as against the foe—for the sails and masts were 
always cleared away as a preparation for action—and if 
the sea was running high, the utmost nicety in steering 
and the most perfect time and skill in rowing would be 
essential to the success of even the simplest manoeuvre. 
There was nothing but the voice of the Keleustes to keep 
the three tiers of rowers, ranged one above the other, 
with their oars of different weights and different lengths, 
in time, and that voice would necessarily be drowned by 
the least excitement or confusion amongst the crews. If 
such careful training was found to be essential for the 
management of the trireme, what must it not have been 
for the quinquereme, a ship nearly twice the size, with 
five banks of oars instead of three ? 

The immediate problem, therefore, for the Romans to 
solve was not how best to train their crews to charge with 
The Corvus the heak _ for n0 training would have fitted 
them for that task before the engagement 
which was imminent—but how best to parry the charge 
and then to convert the naval into a land battle, leaving 
as little opportunity as possible for subsequent ma¬ 
noeuvring, and as much as possible for hand-to-hand 
conflict. The device which the Romans adopted to 
secure these ends was clumsy, but it was effectual. On 
the fore part of each vessel was erected an additional 
mast, and lashed to it by a powerful hinge was a species 
of drawbridge. On the end of this last and standing 
out from it at right angles was a sharp spike of the 
strongest iron, which, from its resemblance, when in this 
position, to the bill of the raven, gave the name of Cor¬ 
vus to the whole construction. When an enemy’s vessel 
was seen approaching for the purpose either of charging 
directly beak to beak, or of striking obliquely the tiers 
of oars and so of incapacitating them for further use, the 


Battle of My Ice. 


45 


drawbridge by an ingenious contrivance, could be swung 
round the mast towards the point where the danger 
threatened ; and the moment the enemy came within 
reach, it could be let fall from its commanding height, 
and with its heavy weight upon the deck of the attack¬ 
ing ship. The iron beak would pierce through the 
planking of the deck and hold it fast in a death-grapple, 
and in a very few moments from the time the Corvus 
fell, the whole body of the Roman mariners would find 
themselves on board the enemy’s deck. The sea fight 
would be practically over, and the land fight would begin, 
and the issue of this conflict between the “ mere rabble 
of an African crew ” and picked Roman legionaries, 
could not be for a moment doubtful. 

Duillius, consul and admiral of the fleet, finding that 
the enemy were engaged in ravaging Mylae, a peninsula 
and town on the north-west of the island, 
not far from Messana, sailed fearlessly of 

towards them. The Carthaginians, when 
with 130 well-built and well-manned ships they saw the 
100 ungainly Roman hulks, the timbers of which ought 
still to have been seasoning in the timber yard, and 
their landsmen sailors, drawn from they knew not where, 
must have felt something of the thrill of long-deferred 
delight which forced from Napoleon the exclamation, 
“ At last I have them, those English, in my grasp,’’ as, 
assuredly, they must have felt something of the keen¬ 
ness of his disappointment at the still more unlooked-for 
result. Not caring in their confidence and joy even to 
form in line of battle, they bore down at once upon the 
Romans as on an easy prey. When they drew near, 
they were for the moment taken aback by the strange 
appearance of vessels coming into battle with their 
masts left standing—masts, too, with such uncouth and 
E 


46 


Rome and Carthage. 


extraordinary appendages attached to them. But their 
hesitation was only for a moment. Evidently these raw 
enemies of theirs did not even know how to clear then- 
decks for action. With redoubled confidence thirty of 
the Carthaginian vessels charged beak to beak on as 
many of the Roman vessels, and each immediately 
found itself a prisoner, held fast by the grappling iron 
which had so excited their surprise and their contempt. 
Others of the Carthaginian ships, thinking to escape the 
fall of the drawbridge which had caught their comrades, 
charged sideways against other parts of the Roma 
ships; but round swung the fatal Raven, as though 
were a thing of life, and descended upon them, pinning 
the vessels tight alongside of each other, and enabling tl 
Roman legionaries to dispense with the bridge and to leap 
at once from every part of their vessel into that of the 
enemy. After fifty of their ships of war had been locker- 
in this deadly embrace, the remainder, declining to fig’ 1 
at all with foes who were ill-bred enough to fight and cor 
quer against all the rules of naval warfare, took to flight 
The Romans were overjoyed, as well they might be, 
at their success. It was their first naval battle, and their 
first great naval victory over the greatest- 
joy at Rome. naval power which the world had seen. Its 
importance was not to be measured by its immediate r 
suits, but rather by the omen it gave for the future. 
Honours, till then unexampled, were freely bestowed 
upon the plebeian Duillius. When he went out to sup¬ 
per it was to the sound of music ; when he returned 
home it was with an escort of torch-bearers. A pillar 
was erected to his honour in the Forum, called the C 
lumna Rostrata, for it was adorned with the brazen bea> 
of the vessels which his wise ignprance and his clumsy 
skill had enabled him to capture. 


Sardinia and Corsica. 


47 


The great: battle of Mylse was fought in the year b. c. 
260, and the Roman army improved the victory of their 
fleet by at once marching to Egesta, a town 
which claimed relationship to Rome by Corsica 

reason of their supposed common descent attacked, 
from Troy, and which was situated in a part of Sicily 
considerably beyond any in which we have as yet seen 
the Romans. The Roman fleet, too, now no longer 
confined its aims to the narrow Sicilian waters, but, 
striking boldly across the open sea, threatened the em¬ 
pire of Carthage in the rich Island of Sardinia also. In 
the savage mountains of the interior the natives still 
managed to maintain something of their independence 
and of their barbarism ; but the coasts had been for 
centuries in the possession of the Carthaginians. Thither 
the unfortunate Hannibal, son of Cisco, had withdrawn 
shortly after his defeat at Mylse, thinking doubtless that 
there, at least, he would be safe from Roman molesta¬ 
tion ; but even there the Romans, in the exultation of 
their first victory, pursued him. Penned within the 
harbour in which he had taken refuge, he lost several 
of his ships in an engagement, and on his escape to land 
was apprehended by his own men and crucified. They 
took the law into their own hands; but, doubtless, they 
only anticipated the sentence which would have been 
passed by the inexorable Hundred on an unlucky ad¬ 
miral who should have returned to Carthage after sur¬ 
viving so many and such unprecedented reverses. The 
Romans followed up their success by an attack on Olbia, 
the capital of the island. The expedition failed. But an 
attempt upon Aleria, formerly a Phocean colony, and 
now the capital of Corsica, was more successful. Cor¬ 
sica had probably never belonged outright to Carthage ; 
but it had, at least, acknowledged her maritime su- 


48 


Ro?ne and Carthage. 


premacy, and the second treaty between Rome and 
Carthage seems to have recognized it as a kind of neu¬ 
tral territory between the two. The epitaph of L. 
Cornelius Scipio, which is still preserved, tells us how he 
took Corsica and Aleria, and how on his return to Rome 
he dedicated a well-deserved temple to the tempest which 
had almost overwhelmed him in the Corsican waters. 

But the absence of the Roman fleet in Corsica and 
Sardinia proved a serious, if only a temporary, drawback 
to the progress of the Roman arms in Sicily. 
bo n th¥de°s f Rome could not yet afford so to dissipate 
her energy, and Hamilcar, commander-in- 
chief at Panormus, now gave evidence of a vigour and 
capacity such as had hitherto not been witnessed among 
either of the contending parties. Hearing that the 
Romans and their allies, on their return from Egesta, 
were at discord amongst themselves, he surprised and 
cut to pieces 4,000 of the enemy in their camp near 
Himera. He destroyed the town of Eryx and transferred 
its inhabitants in a body to the neighbouring fortress of 
Drepanum ; and it was doubtless the bold front he showed 
which, in the following year, compelled the Romans to re¬ 
tire from before Panormus, after merely convincing them¬ 
selves of the strength of its fortifications. Meanwhile 
both sides were straining every nerve to raise such a 
navy as should be able by sheer strength to bear down 
all opposition to it—the Romans with the avowed inten¬ 
tion of fighting their way into Africa, and so compelling 
Carthage to submit to the terms of peace which they 
might be willing to offer her ; the Carthaginians with the 
hope of recovering the empire of the seas which had 
now been half torn from her, and of excluding the 
Romans, if not from the whole of her dependencies, at 
all events from her home domain in Africa. 


Huge Naval Armaments. 


49 


The material results in the way of shipping obtained 
by either side were not disproportionate to the efforts that 
had been made. Probably never, either be¬ 
fore or after, did such vast naval armaments Hu s e navaI 

armaments. 

put to sea. The most important naval com¬ 
bats of ancient and of modern times-the battle of Artemi- 
sium, Salamis, and Naulochus, of Lepanto, Trafalgar, 
and Navarino—sink into insignificance, as far as mere 
numbers go, when compared with that of Ecnomus. Other 
battles, doubtless, enlist the sympathies more fully on one 
side or the other, or interest more keenly those who care 
for war merely as war. The stake fought for at Salamis 
was an infinitely higher stake, and was fraught with vastly 
more momentous issues for the whole human race ; for 
it was the cause of Greek freedom and civilization against 
Asiatic slavery and barbarism. At Trafalgar the darling 
scheme of the heartless oppressor of all Europe was for 
ever frustrated by the crowning naval victory of a war 
which, the worst calumniators of England must admit, 
was not a selfish war. In all these points—in the motives 
of the combatants, in its purely military or scientific in¬ 
terest, and in its results—the battle of Ecnomus is not 
specially remarkable. It is imposible to give our un¬ 
divided sympathies to either side. It was a battle, in the 
main, of brute force and not of consummate skill; it was 
not decisive even of the results of the war of which it 
formed so bulky a part. Still less can it attract those 
who look upon all wars except those waged in self-de¬ 
fence or for purely moral ends—all wars, that is, except 
those waged ultimately in the interests of peace—with 
horror and condemnation. Yet men are men, and even 
the Carthaginian mercenaries, though their employers 
did not think so, were worth something more than the 
pay they earned by their services ; and size is size, and 


5 ° 


Rome and Carthage. 


Battle of 
Ecnomus. 


tvill always, apart from everything else, and whether it 
ought to or not, attract to itself the attention of mankind. 
And from the point of view of mere size^-the number, 
that is, of its shi ( s and the crews who fought in them— 
the battle of Ecnomus is certainly entitled to a conspicu¬ 
ous place in history. The vicissitudes of the battle are 
somewhat complicated ; but it is necessary for one who 
would understand aright the First Punic War to dwell 
awhile upon a conflict which is so eminently characteris¬ 
tic of it. 

The Romans set sail from Messana (b.c. 256) with 
330 ships, while the Carthaginians mustered the still 
more portentous number of 350 ships in their 
famous port of Lilybseum; so that, if we are to 
accept the deliberate calculation of Polybius, 
who assigns 300 rowers and 120 mariners to each ship of 
war, nearly 300,000 men must have met in the battle 
which ensued. The Carthaginians, who knew too well 
what an invasion of Africa meant, and who felt that the 
ravages of the Roman army would not be the worst of 
evils that it would involve, moved slowly forward to 
Heraclea Minoa, determined to crush the invaders before 
they could leave the Sicilian coast. 

The Romans, having taken on board their legions at 
Phintias, divided their immense fleet into four squadrons. 

The two first squadrons formed two sides of 
an equilateral triangle, while the third, hav¬ 
ing behind them the transports laden with 
cavalry, formed its base. To the rear of these again, 
and forming at once a rear guard and a reserve, came 
the fourth squadron, which Polybius calls, from the im¬ 
portant function allotted to it, the Triarii. At the apex 
of the triangle, their prows standing out to sea, and point¬ 
ing the rest of the fleet the way to Africa, sailed abreast 


Order of 
battle. 


Plan of E:nomus. 


S' 

























5 2 


Rome and Carthage. 


the two monster hexiremes—ships as large probably as 
our ships of the line—of the consuls and admirals in one, 
M. Atilius Regulus and L. Manlius. The whole Roman 
fleet together thus formed the figure called in nautical 
manoeuvring an embolon , or wedge, a figure said by Po¬ 
lybius to be suited to energetic action and very difficult 
to break through. On the other hand, it postulated a 
skill in seamanship, and a confidence in their own 
powers both of attack and of defence, very different 
from that which marked the Roman fleet at their victory 
at Mylae, only three years before. The Carthaginians, 
reminded by their admirals—Hanno, who had in vain 
attempted to raise the siege of Agrigentum, and Hamil- 
car, who had lately fought, not without credit to himself, 
at Tyndaris—of the momentous issues that were at stake, 
and asked to choose whether they would henceforward 
fight for the possession of Sicily or in defence of their 
own hearths and homes, moved eastward along the 
shore in good spirits and order. They hove in sight of 
the enemy, as it would seem, to the west of the promon¬ 
tory of Ecnomus, and, observing the four-fold division 
of the Roman armaments, they divided their own fleet 
into a similar number of squadrons. 

The Carthaginian admirals, in order to detach the first 
two squadrons of the Roman fleet from the third, which 
was retarded by the transports, arranged 
Victory of that the part of their line which should be 
first attacked by the thm end of the Roman 
wedge should give way before it and feign a flight. The 
stratagem was partially successful, for the flying Cartha¬ 
ginian ships, wheeling round suddenly, closed in upon 
the sides of the Roman triangle, which had pursued them 
too far, and by their superior rapidity and skill seriously 
threatened its safety. But the knowledge that they were 


Roman Victory. 


S3 


fighting under the immediate eye of the consuls, and the 
confidence inspired in them by the possession of the 
Raven, enabled the Romans to hold their own, till 
Hamilcar, in sheer exhaustion, was compelled to save 
himself by flight. Meanwhile a fierce double combat 
had been raging elsewhere. Hanno, who was on the 
Carthaginian right, had forborne to take any part in the 
first onset, but, keeping out to sea, as soon as the three 
first Roman squadrons had got well past him, had fallen 
upon the rear guard. “ Ventum erat ad Triarios," and, 
for a time, it seemed as if even the Triarii would give 
way. The Carthaginian left, which had hitherto hugged 
the shore in a long line at right angles to the rest of the 
fleet, as soon as they had got well behind the 
Roman position, attacked the third squadron, which was 
impeded by the transports. These, however, slipped the 
ropes, and did battle with their assailants. There were 
thus three distinct sea-fights, simultaneous and well 
maintained. Hamilcar, as has been said, was the first 
to give way, and his fight practically decided the battle. 
Hanno followed his example, and Manlius just then com¬ 
ing up, both consuls bore down together on the left wing 
of the enemy, which, had they only been less afraid of 
the boarding-bridges, must ere this have been victorious. 
A few only of the Carthaginian ships escaped. The 
Roman victory was complete, and there was now nothing 
left to bar the conquerors from Africa. 


54 


Rome atid Carthage. 


CHAPTER V. 

INVASION OF AFRICA. REGULUS AND XANTHIPPUS. 

(256-250 B.C.) 

The resolution of the Roman Senate had been long 
since taken. But it is hardly to be wondered at that 
when the hour had come for carrying it out, 
Africa ° n ° f t ^ ie h earts °f some among the Roman sol¬ 
diers should have been filled with misgiv¬ 
ings, and that these should have found expression in the 
mutinous language of a tribune. Xenophon has told us 
how anxiously Cyrus the Younger concealed from the 
Ten Thousand Greeks the real nature of the perilous 
adventure he had undertaken ; and how, before he re¬ 
vealed to them the fatal secret, he took care so far to 
commit them to the enterprise that a retreat would be 
then not less dangerous than an advance. The Romans 
were now entering on a phase of the great contest which 
to them must have seemed hardly less perilous than the 
Anabasis to the Greeks. They had to cross a sea which 
to them was as unknown and, under existing circum¬ 
stances, as fraught with the possibilities of mischief as 
the trackless deserts of Mesopotamia. They were to 
enter a new continent, peopled not by the wild ass and 
the antelope and the scudding ostrich which had amused 
the Ten Thousand Greeks, but, as popular imagination 
would have it, and as a grave historian had related, 
“ by lions and by dog-headed monsters, and by creatures 
with no heads and with eyes in their breasts.” However, 
threats of a more summary kind used by Regulus over¬ 
powered these forebodings of distant disaster and crushed 
the rising mutiny, and the Roman fleet, after it had been 


Carthaginian Territory ravaged. 55 

revictualled and repaired, stood right across the Mediter¬ 
ranean to the nearest point of Africa, a distance of only 
ninety miles. 

The Hermean Promontory is the north-eastern horn 
of the Bay of Carthage. Here the Romans waited 
awhile to muster their forces. It was the 
precise point beyond which—as treaty after fndThort- 
treaty, made with the jealous commercial of 8 Carthage 
state, had stipulated—no Roman ship should 
dare to pass, whether to trade, to plunder, or to colonize; 
and it must have been with feelings, not of satisfaction 
or of curiosity alone, that, after a short pause, the Roman 
fleet began to penetrate deeper into the mysteries of that 
great Carthaginian preserve by coasting along till they 
reached a town which, from the shield-shaped eminence 
on which it stood, they called Clypea, as the Greeks had 
already named it Aspis. They set foot without opposi¬ 
tion on African soil, and when the town refused to sur¬ 
render they besieged and took it. Meanwhile the Car¬ 
thaginians had been forewarned of the coming danger. 
Hanno, after his defeat at Ecnomus, had made straight 
across for Carthage, and, though he must have risked 
his life in so doing, had bidden the citizens prepare for 
the worst. But to be forewarned was with the Cartha¬ 
ginians, at this period of their history, not necessarily to 
be forearmed ; their best armies were absent in Sicily ; 
their navy was demoralized and half destroyed, and the 
native Libyans were in a state of chronic disaffection. 
Had the Romans marched at once upon the capital— 
without an adequate army or a competent general as it 
then was—it is just possible that it might have fallen. 
But this was not to be. The rich territory which lay 
between Clypea and Carthage was too tempting and too 
easy a prey for the needy Roman soldiery. It had now 


56 


Rome and Carthage. 


quite recovered from the devastations of Agathocles, 
and the Romans, strangers as yet, happily for them¬ 
selves, to luxury, contemplated with amazement and 
delight the pleasant gardens and the opulent palaces ol 
the merchant princes of Carthage, which had sated the 
greed of the mercenaries of Agathocles fifty years before. 
Nor did their hands spare what their eyes admired. 
The palaces were ransacked of their valuables, and then 
ruthlessly set on fire; the cattle were driven in vast 
herds towards the Roman camp; and 20,000 of the inha¬ 
bitants of the surrounding country found themselves 
collected in the Roman ships to be sold into slavery. 
Nor had the Carthaginians, in the interval which had 
elapsed since the invasion of Agathocles, grown less 
fatally distrustful of their own subjects. They still for¬ 
bade the subject cities to surround themselves with walls, 
not because, like the Spartans, they thought a living 
rampart of men was a better protection than any ma¬ 
sonry, but because they had good reason to suspect that 
such defence might be turned against themselves. Ac¬ 
cordingly, Regulus passed with facility from village to 
village, or from town’to town, till, as the Romans boasted, 
he had nearly doubled the number of 200 townships 
which Agathocles had conquered before him. 

But just now came from Rome the astounding order, 
which may well have aroused the misgivings even of 
the triumphant Roman army, that one of 
Manlius* ^ ie tw0 consuls was to return home at once 
with his troops and his ships, leaving the 
other in Africa with what Polybius calls—one would 
think with a touch of irony—a “sufficient force” to bring 
the war to a conclusion. It was not so much that the 
Roman Senate actually underestimated the difficulty of 
conquering Carthage, as that it did not occur to a bodv 


Victory of Regulus. 


57 


of so conservative a frame of mind, that, now that the 
scale of their warfare had been so enlarged, it might be 
advisable to make a corresponding alteration in all the 
conditions under which they carried it on. The princi¬ 
ple that every soldier is, above all and before all things, 
a citizen, and that he ought not to forego any of his civil 
rights or duties for a longer time than is absolutely ne¬ 
cessary, is in itself a noble principle, and one which 
modern states, with their overgrown and appalling 
standing armies, would do well to remember. But the 
rule that an army should always return to Rome, either 
to go into winter quarters or to be disbanded, was a 
practical application of the principle which, though it 
had its advantages, must have been inconvenient even 
in the early struggles of the Roman republic ; while the 
maxim of state policy that the commander-in-chief, 
whatever his talents and whatever the complication of 
his military plans, should, as soon as a particular day of 
the year came round, be superseded by a civil magis¬ 
trate, whatever his military incapacity, was a maxim 
which, though it may have acted well enough in a border 
warfare against a discontented Latin or Etruscan town, 
had broken down completely in the Samnite wars, and 
would be absolutely fatal in the far more gigantic strug¬ 
gle against Carthage. 

But the Roman Senate, whatever its practical ability 
and courage in carrying out the current business of the 
state, was not more foresighted than other 
deliberative assemblies, and needed the bit- Victory of 
ter teaching of experience to bring home to 
them what seems to us so obvious a truth. Its orders 
were obeyed without a murmur, and Manlius set off for 
Rome, with his prisoners, his army, and his fleet, leav¬ 
ing Regulus behind him, the heir to that strange inher- 


5§ 


Rome and Carthage. 


itance of a reputation for military rashness and disaster 
on the one hand, and for disinterested patriotism on the 
other, which, immortalized as it has been by Horace, has 
gone the round of the world, and will doubtless survive 
the most convincing demonstration of its groundlessness 
by pitiless critics. The army with which he was expected, 
as it would seem, to complete the conquest of Africa 
amounted only to 15,000 infantry and 500 cavalry. He 
immediately threatened Adis, a town of some impor¬ 
tance ; and to raise its siege the Carthaginians occupied 
a hilly district where they could make but little use of the 
arm in which they were really strong, their elephants and 
cavalry. The Romans were not slow to perceive this 
mistake, and, in spite of the strenuous resistance of 
some of the mercenai'ies, assaulted and carried the posi¬ 
tion, while the Carthaginian cavalry and elephants ex- 
tricated themselves, as best they could, from the broken 
ground, and as soon as they reached the plain saved 
themselves by flight. The Romans now fell to devasta¬ 
ting the country with redoubled energy and with even 
less of caution than before. Tunis, an important town 
in sight of the capital, fell into their hands, and Regu- 
lus encamped on the banks of the Bagradas in the 
heart of what was then the most fertile country in the 
world. 

The prospects of the Carthaginians looked desperate 
indeed. Their only available army had been defeated, 
and what the Romans had spared in their 
plighfc^Car- devastations, the Numidians, a people al- 
thagimans. ways on the move and always eager for 
plunder, carried off. If the Romans had chastised the 
country districts with whips, the Numidians, maddened 
with oppression as well as thirsting for booty, now chas¬ 
tised them with scorpions. All the inhabitants who 


Conduct of Regulus. 


59 


could flee took refuge in the capital, and the vast in¬ 
crease of population was already threatening the city 
with the famine and the pestilence which are usually the 
last outcome and not the forerunners of a siege. 

Regulus seeing their miserable plight, and anxious lest 
his successor, who, according to Roman custom, might 
be soon expected, should reap the glory of 
the war which he had so far conducted pea ce 
prosperously, offered to negotiate for peace. rejected. 
The proposal was joyfully accepted ; but Regulus, intox¬ 
icated with success, offered the Carthaginians terms 
which could scarcely have been harder if the Romans 
had been within their walls. The conquered people 
were to acknowledge the supremacy of Rome, to form 
an offensive and defensive alliance with her, to give up 
all their ships of war but one, to cede, not Sicily only— 
for that the Carthaginians, acknowledging the fortune of 
war, would have been glad to do—but Corsica and Sar¬ 
dinia and the Lipari Islands also, to surrender the Ro¬ 
man deserters, to ransom their own prisoners, to pay all 
that it had cost the Romans to bring them to their knees, 
and a heavy tribute besides! Terms intolerable in 
themselves were made still more intolerable by the in¬ 
solent bearing of the Plebeian consul towards those 


whom he looked upon as prostrate before him. He had 
already written to Rome that he had “sealed up the 
gates of Carthage with terror," and now he told the 
ambassadors roughly that “ men who were good for 
anything should either conquer or submit to their 
betters.” The Romans, when after the battle of the 
/Egatian Isles they had to recoup themselves, as best 
they could, for fifteen more years of tedious warfare, for 
the loss of four fleets, and for the humiliation which 
befell this very Regulus so soon afterwards in Africa, 


6o 


Rome and Carthage. 


did not propose such ruinous conditions as these; 
and Scipio himself, after Zama, if only because so 
many of the tiger’s teeth had been already drawn, did 
not think it necessary to clip its claws as well. It argues 
an insensate ignorance on the part of the Romans 
of what was truly great in their antagonists, if they 
thought that they would accept such terms. The spirit 
of the ambassadors rose with their adversity. They 
refused even to discuss the conditions offered them, and 
the Carthaginian Senate determined to die, fighting 
bravely with arms in their hands, rather than sign vol¬ 
untarily their own death-warrant. Be the story of the 
subsequent heroism and self-sacrifice of Regulus ever 
so true, a serious abatement must be made in estimating 
his qualities both of head and heart, for the insolence 
and infatuation which he displayed on this critical 
occasion. 

The moment at which the Carthaginians were obliged 
to give up all. hopes of peace was also, luckily for them, 
the precise moment at which a recruiting 
Xanthippus. 0 ffi cer happened to return from Greece with 
a band of soldiers of fortune whom he had induced to 
place their 6words at the disposal of the rich republic. 
Among these was Xanthippus, a Lacedaemonian of infe¬ 
rior grade, but one who had been well schooled in war by 
the admirable training which the Spartan discipline still 
gave, and by the troublous times in which the whole of 
Greece was involved. Observing the excellence of the 
Carthaginian cavalry and the number of the Cartha¬ 
ginian elephants, and hearing also the story of the 
recent defeat, he remarked casually, as the story goes, to 
his friends, that the Carthaginians had been conquered 
not so much by the enemy as by themselves, or by the 
blunders of their generals. The words were caught up 


Great Victory of Xanthippus. 61 

And ran from mouth to mouth in the eager and anxious 
city. Before long they reached the ears of the govern¬ 
ment, probably of the dreaded Hundred themselves. 
The Hundred, seldom backward, if our accounts are 
trustworthy, to listen to anything to the prejudice of the 
instruments they employed, summoned Xanthippus before 
them. He justified what he had said by argument, and 
pledged his word that if only the Carthaginians would 
keep to the plains and utilize that in which their real 
strength lay, they would be victorious. It is little credit¬ 
able to the insight either of the Carthaginian government 
or the generals that they should have required a Greek 
soldier of fortune to apprise them of the mistake they 
had made ; but there seems to be no reason to doubt the 
plain statement of Polybius. 

The command, but not, as yet, the sole command, 
was entrusted to Xanthippus. His confidence was 
contagious, and there ran through the city 
the iovful news that now the hour had come Is made * ole 

J J commander. 

and the man. Confidence grew into enthu¬ 
siasm when men saw the way in which Xanthippus 
handled his troops, and contrasted it with the sorry 
performances of the other generals. A cry was raised 
for instant battle; for all were convinced that no evil 
could befall them under such a leader as Xanthippus. 
A council of war was held, but the popular enthusiasm 
carried everything before it; and the other generals, 
pocketing their pride, or sharing, as it would seem, in 
the general enthusiasm, handed over the undivided 
responsibility to Xanthippus. 

The Carthaginian army, reinforced by the addition of 
the recruits from Greece, numbered 12,000 infantry, with 
4,000 cavalry, and a formidable array of 100 elephants. 
Regulus, surprised at the novel sight of a Carthaginian 
F 


62 


Rome and Carthage. 


army encamping on the plains, hesitated a moment, as 
though there was something more in this 
irfctorynear change of tactics than met the eye, and 

Adis - pitched his own camp at a distance of a mile 

from them. But finding that the Carthaginians meant 
to fight, and flushed with his hitherto unbroken success, 
he drew up his army in order of battle. His small body 
of cavalry he placed, as usual, on the wings ; but his in¬ 
fantry he massed much more closely together and in 
much deeper formations than was common among the 
Romans, thinking that they could thus be better able to 
resist the onset of the elephants. At last Xanthippus 
ordered the elephants, to charge, while the cavalry were 
to attack and then to close in on the wings of the enemy. 
The Roman horse, outnumbered in the proportion of 
four to one, took to flight without striking a blow, and 
the elephants rushing wildly into the foremost ranks of 
the Roman infantry, laid them low in every direction 
and trampled them to death by scores. The main body 
however, stood firm, and when the elephants turned 
aside towards the flanks, it found itself face to face with 
the Carthaginian centre, which had not yet drawn the 
sword. Attacked in front by the infantry, on the flanks 
which the flight of their own cavalry had left unprotected 
by the Numidian cavalry and on the rear by the elephants 
the majority of the Roman legionaries stood their groum 
nobly, as they did under similar circumstances at th 
Trebia forty years later, and died where they were stand¬ 
ing. A few took to flight ; but the flight of foot soldiers 
from Numidian cavalry over level ground only meant a 
slight prolongation of the miserable struggle for life 
Regulus himself, at the head of six hundred men, sui 
rendered to the conquerors, and of the whole army 
2,000 only, who had at the first onset defeated the me 


Thank-offerings to Moloch. 


6 3 


cenaries, and after pursuing them to their camp had 
taken no other part in the battle, escaped to Clypea with 
the news of the disaster. 

Clypea was the only spot in the whole of the country 
which the Romans had so easily overrun that they could 
now call their own. The Carthaginians first 
spoiled the slain, and then leading the Ro- ^ctory. ° f 
man consul himself and the other survivors 
in chains, returned in triumph to the capital. It was 
the first pitched battle which they had fairly won ; but 
that one battle had reversed the whole fortune of the 
war. The Roman army had been all but annihilated, 
and its miserable remnant was besieged upon the spot 
where they had first landed. The inhabitants of the 
country districts could now return to their homes and 
rebuild their shattered homesteads ; and the richness of 
the incomparable soil, with its abundant irrigation, 
would soon efface all traces of the invaders. The citi¬ 
zens themselves once again breathed freely, for they 
were delivered from the prospect of an immediate siege, 
the last horrors of which, in the shape of sickness and 
starvation, they had already begun to taste. What 
wonder, as Polybius says, if, in the exuberance of their 
joy, all ranks alike gave themselves up to feasting and 
thanksgivings to their gods ? 

But what kind of thanksgiving did the Carthaginian 
deities delight to receive and the Carthaginian worship¬ 
per bring himself to give ? We know from 
Diodorus that when Agathocles was threat- ing^to ° Lr 
ening Carthage fifty years before, 200 chil- Moloch ' 
dren of the noblest Carthaginian families had been offer¬ 
ed alive to appease the angry Moloch, and 300 men had 
willingly devoted themselves for the same purpose, if 
haply they so might save the city from the impending 


6 4 


Rome and Carthage. 


siege. Nor can vve doubt that the greater agony through 
which the Carthaginians had now passed, and the still 
more uulooked-for triumph by which they had issued 
from it, were marked by the same horrible offerings on a 
more imposing scale, There stood the huge brazen god 
with arms outstretched to receive his offerings, as though 
a father to clasp his children to his breast. But the arms 
sloped treacherously down towards the ground, and the 
victim placed upon them rolled off into a seething caul¬ 
dron of fire below, his cries drowned, as in the vale of 
Hinnom, by the rolling of drums and the blare of trum¬ 
pets. This was the end, no doubt, of some of the 
noblest among the Roman captives. For Moloch was a 
jealous god. No alien children, bought with money and 
reared up for human sacrifice, would he accept. He 
allowed no substitutes, nor would he take from his wor¬ 
shipper that which cost him nothing or cost him money 
only. An only child, a first-born child, a child remark¬ 
able for its beauty, its wealth, or its noble birth, this was 
the offering which touched the fire-god’s heart; and the 
parents, who had sacrificed their own children to avert 
the siege, would now, not unnaturally, come forward to 
give the noblest among the Roman captives as thank- 
offerings to the god who had heard their prayer and, as 
they believed, delivered them from their distress. 

The Romans, when they heard of the disaster which 
had befallen Regulus, fitted out a large fleet for the res¬ 
cue of the survivors (b. c. 255); while the 
Carthaginians, rightly judging that the res¬ 
olution of Rome would not be broken by 
any one calamity, however great, also set to’workto build 
a new fleet which should protect them from a second in¬ 
vasion. But in vain did they endeavour to reduce Clypea 
before the Romans could reach it. The desperate cour- 


Efforts of 
Romans. 


Destruction of Roman fleet. 


65 


age of the small garrison repelled all assaults, and en¬ 
abled it to hold out till the ensuing summer, when the 
Roman fleet arrived. A naval battle took place off the 
Hermaean promontory. The Romans gained the day, 
and took on board, at their leisure, the defenders of 
Clypea who had so well earned their lives. 

They had well earned their lives, but they were not 
long to enjoy them; they turned their backs with joy 
upon Africa, but they were not to see Italy. ^ ^ 

The armament had reached Camarina in of Roman 
safety, and was about to round Pachynus, fleet ' 
and to sail home through the Straits of Messana, when a 
terrific storm, such as is common in those parts and at 
that time of the year, broke upon them. Some of the 
Roman ships foundered in the open sea; more were 
dashed to pieces against the sharp rocks and numerous 
promontories of that iron-bound coast, and the shore was 
strewed for miles with wrecks and corpses. Out of 340 
ships it was said that only eight escaped ; and what must 
have given an additional sting to the calamity was the 
consciousness that it might have been avoided. The 
pilots, probably the only persons on board who had had 
real experience of the sea, or who knew what ugly 
weather was, had warned the admirals of the dangerous 
storms to which the south of Sicily was exposed after the 
rising of the tempestuous Orion. Along the northern 
shore they would be in calm water. But the maritime 
experience acquired in five years wherein nothing had 
gone wrong with them had taught the Romans, as they 
fondly thought, that there was nothing in the terrors of 
the sea with which Roman courage could not cope ; and 
the admirals were deaf to the voice of the weather-wise 
pilots, who shook their heads at dangers which could 
neither be seen nor handled. Moreover, they wished to 


66 


Rome and Carthage. 


make the most of their recent victory, and by its prestige 
to bring over to themselves a few small towns on the 
south coast of Sicily which still wavered in their alle¬ 
giance. The prize was small, as Polybius significantly 
remarks, and the stake large ; but they staked, and lost 
it. 

Elated as they were by the rapid departure of the Ro¬ 
man fleet from Africa, the spirit of the Carthaginians 
must have risen higher still when they heard 
fVesheffom 0 f su dden and complete destruction. 

on both sides. r 

Like Athens or like Venice, Carthage might 
well call herself by the proud title of “ Bride of the Sea,” 
and her citizens, like the Vikings of after times, might 
well boast that they were “ friends of the sea and ene¬ 
mies of all that sailed upon it.” The war might now be 
once more transferred to Sicily, and thither Hannibal 
was sent with all the available land forces, with 140 ele¬ 
phants, and with a fleet which was to co-operate with 
the army. He made straight for Lilybaeum, and taking 
the field, prepared to ravage the open country. With 
unconquerable resolution, however, the Romans deter¬ 
mined to fit out a new fleet to replace the one that had 
been destroyed ; and the miracle of speed which we 
have noticed before is said to have been repeated again. 
Within three months 220 vessels were built from the 
keel, and were ready for action. 

The two consuls, A. Atilius and Cn. Cornelius Scipio 
Asina, who had been released from his captivity, pick¬ 
ing up on their way the few vessels which 
Romans take h ac j esca p ec l to Messana from the general 
wreck, made for Panormus (b. C. 254), and 
in the hour of their humiliation hazarded an attack upon 
its strong fortifications, which they had shrunk from 
even after their victory at Mylae; and, what is more 


Destruction of second Roman fleet. 


67 


surprising, they took it with ease. A tower which com¬ 
manded the fortifications towards the sea was first de¬ 
stroyed. This disaster put the new city into the hands 
of the Romans, and the old at once surrendered. 
Never was a war more fertile in vicissitudes and sur¬ 
prises than had been the first nine years of this. Here 
were the Romans stronger and more energetic after a 
defeat than after a victory ; taking by a sudden on¬ 
slaught an almost virgin fortress, which had never yet 
been taken but by Pyrrhus; baffling all the calculations 
of a not inexperienced foe, and then sailing back to 
Rome as though nothing extraordinary had happened, 
leaving only a small garrison in what had been the Car¬ 
thaginian capital of the island, the head-quarters of its 
armies and its fleets. 

In the following year (b. c. 253), the Romans tempted 
fortune again by reconnoitring the African coast. They 
landed here and there, and ravaged the 
surrounding country, but with no result 0 f seC ond 
proportionate to the danger they ran ; and Roman fleet - 
they ended, owing to their want of maritime experience, 
by falling into the Syrtis, whose name expresses the 
power with which an unlucky vessel coming within its 
reach is sucked into its deadly embraces. The vessels 
ran aground, and were rescued only by a sudden rise of 
the sea, which the crews helped by throwing overboard 
their valuables. The moment they were extricated from 
their danger, like animals that have been in the toils, 
they made their way back to Panormus, only too thank¬ 
ful if they could escape the pursuit of the enemy. But 
the worst was still to come. In crossing from Panormus 
to Italy they were overtaken, off the promontory of 
Palinurus, by another storm, which, as it must have 
seemed, could not now let even the seas to the north of 


68 


Rome and Carthage. 


Sicily alone if Romans were to be found in it. Never 
since the tempest had raged day after day on the south¬ 
ern coast of Magnesia, and strewn the coasts of Thes¬ 
saly and Euboea with the wrecks of the vast Persian 
fleet, had the god of the sea shown himself so decided 
a partizan in a naval contest, or demanded so costly a 
series of sacrifices. The Roman spirit at length began 
to show some symptoms of giving way. At all events 
the Senate determined not again at present to tempt the 
sea, but to depend upon their land forces; and for the 
next two years the war was carried on under conditions 
not very dissimilar to those under which it had been 
begun. 

The Carthaginians were now once more able to carry 

the war into Sicily, and the large army which they sent 

„ , . . under Hasdrubal to Lilybaeutn had that 

Carthaginians ... 

threaten within it which seemed able, for the time at 

° least, to demoralize, nay, even to paralyze, 

their foes. The havoc wrought by the elephants amongst 
the troops of Regulus in the battle near Carthage had 
been duly reported to the Roman armies in Sicily, and 
it had lost nothing in the transmission. To be knocked 
down, and then trampled to pieces by a furious beast 
against which neither fraud nor force could avail aught, 
would be terrible enough to any well-regulated mind; 
but the fear which it seems to have inspired completely 
unnerved the Romans. It was not death itself—for that 
they would have faced gladly in a hundred fair battle¬ 
fields or forlorn hopes ; it was the instrument and the 
manner of death that they feared. They refused to face 
the elephants, much as the bravest troops now-a-days 
might refuse to measure their collective strength against 
the brute power of a steam-engine, or as men armed 
with muzzle-loaders might demur, however great their 


Battle of Panormus. 


69 


valour, to stand up against the cold and cruel mechan¬ 
ism of a mitrailleuse. Once again did the two armies 
face one another at a few furlongs distance, in the terri¬ 
tory of Selinus, and once again did they part company 
without coming to blows. It takes two to make a quar¬ 
rel, and the Romans clung steadfastly to the hills where 
their experience in Africa had taught them that the one 
hundred and forty elephants would be useless, and 
where the Carthaginians therefore could not attack them 
with any hope of success. There were symptoms, too, 
of serious disaffection and discontent among the Roman 
officers, and once again it was clear to the Roman Sen¬ 
ate that the sea itself would be less terrible than such an 
indefinite and purposeless prolongation of the war. 
They accordingly reconsidered their resolution, and 
began to build a third fleet. 

Hasdrubal meanwhile, encouraged by what he thought 
the cowardice of the Romans, issued from Selinus, and 
proceeded to carry off the rich harvests, just 
then ripe, from under the eyes of the Roman Battle of 
army at Panormus. Caecilius Metellus was Panormus - 
in command there, a man of prudence and self-restraint, 
but able to strike a vigorous blow when there was occa¬ 
sion for it. When Hasdrubal and his elephants had 
crossed the river near the city—a step for which he had 
been anxiously waiting—he sent forth his light troops in 
such numbers as to induce the Carthaginians to draw 
up in line of battle. In front of the city wall ran a broad 
and deep ditch, within which the light troops were warned 
to take shelter, if, after they had provoked an attack 
from Hasdrubal, they should find themselves hard 
pressed. Here they would find fresh weapons awaiting 
them, thrown down by the townsmen from the walls 
above, and, safe under their protection, would be able 


70 


Rome and Carthage. 


to shower missiles upon the advancing elephants. The 
order of Metellus was carried out to the letter, and the 
result answered his expectations. The elephant-drivers 
—Indians, Polybius here and elsewhere calls them— 
eager to assert their independence of Hasdrubal, or to 
win special credit for themselves, advanced to close 
quarters before the word of command was given. The 
light troops gave way, and, leaping down into the ditch, 
received the unwieldy monsters, which came blundering 
on to its very edge, with showers of darts and burning 
arrows. Unable to vent their rage on their assailants in 
the ditch, the elephants rushed wildly back on the Car¬ 
thaginian army, and wrought amongst them the havoc 
which the Romans had feared for themselves. Now 
was the moment for Metellus. Unobserved by the ene¬ 
my, he had massed the main body of his army close 
behind the gate of the town. He sallied out in force, 
charged the enemy, who were already in confusion, on 
the flank, and, routing them completely, drove them 
headlong back towards Selinus. It was the greatest 
pitched battle of the war, and restored confidence to the 
Romans at the time when they needed it most sorely. 

But we must dwell a moment on the fate of the ele¬ 
phants who had played so important a part in the battle 

itself, and whose terrors exercised so critical 
Fate of the and s0 characteristic an influence on this part 

elephants. 

of the First Punic War. Ten of the ele- 
phants had been taken prisoners during the battle, with 
their drivers. The drivers of the remainder had been 
either thrown to the ground by the elephants themselves 
or killed by the weapons of the Romans, and the crea¬ 
tures were still, after the battle, rushing wildly about, no 
Roman daring to lay hands upon them. The promise 
of their lives to the captured drivers induced some 


Story of Rfgulus. 


7i 


among them to exercise their moral control when physi¬ 
cal force was out of the question, and in time the panic- 
stricken monsters, 120 in number, were reduced to order. 
It was determined to send them to Rome to grace the 
well-deserved triumph of Metellus ; but it was no easy 
matter to convey them across the stormy Straits of Mes- 
sana. Huge rafts were lashed together, earth and herb¬ 
age were scattered over the planks, and high bulwaiks 
carried round the whole; and the animals allowed them¬ 
selves to be ferried quietly across the straits under a total 
misconception as to the operation which they were under¬ 
going. They marched in stately procession up the Sacred 
Way and were drawn thence, like so many captured kings 
or generals before and after them, to the place of execu¬ 
tion, the Roman Circus. There, after being baited with 
“ arms of courtesy,” to familiarize the people and the 
soldiers that were to be, with their formidable appear¬ 
ance, they received the coup de grace with armes a out- 
rance ; and the fatal appetite for blood which was then 
just beginning to show itself among the Roman popu¬ 
lace must have been sated to the full by so gigantic 
and horrible a sacrifice. The noble family of the Me- 
telli always cherished, as well they might, the memory 
of the great battle of Panormus among their most pre¬ 
cious heirlooms, and coins of theirs are still extant re¬ 
presenting the formidable beast which their ancestor 
had, by his victory at this critical point of the war, robbed 
of half its terrors. 

It was, probably, about this time that an embassy ap¬ 
peared at Rome from Carthage to negotiate, if possible, 
a peace, but anyhow an exchange of pri- gtory of 
soners. It was accompanied by Regulus, embassy of 

who had been languishing for five years in Re s |lUls - 

a Carthaginian prison, and who came upon his parole to 


7 2 


Rome and Carthage. 


return to Carthage if his mission should prove unsuc¬ 
cessful. Everyone knows the beautiful touches with 
which the story of what follows has been filled in by the 
genius of Horace and of other late poets and orators ; 
how Regulus refused to enter the city as a citizen, or the 
Senate house as a senator, since he had lost his right to 
both on the day when he became a captive ; how, when 
at length he brought himself to speak before the Senate, 
he spoke in terms such as no Roman had ever heard 
before. “ Let those who had surrendered when they 
ought to have died, die in the land which had witnessed 
their disgrace ; let not the Senate establish a precedent 
fraught with disaster to ages yet unborn, or buy with 
their gold what ought only to be won back by arms. 
He was old, and in the short time of life that still re¬ 
mained to him could do no good service to his country, 
while the generals who would be exchanged for him 
were still hale and vigorous; ” how, when he saw the 
Senate still wavering between pity for him and their 
sense of duty to their country, he nailed them to tliefr 
purpose by telling them he had taken a slow poison 
which was even then coursing through his veins ; and 
how, last of all, he strode off, with his eyes indeed fixed 
upon the ground, lest he should look upon his sorrowing 
wife and children, but with a step as light and a heart as 
free as though he were going for a holiday to his country 
estate. It is an ideal picture of a brave man bearing up 
under a great misfortune, and striving, as best he could, 
to wipe out disgrace; and as an ideal picture we are con¬ 
tent to let it pass. 

But it is otherwise with the sequel to the 
death ° fhlS story, with that which not only idealizes the 
Roman character, but sets it off by blacken¬ 
ing that of its rivals, as if it was the Carthaginians who 


Story of Regulus. 


73 


enjoyed a monopoly of cruelty, and as if the Romans 
themselves had always behaved with ordinary humanity 
to a conquered foe, a foe like C. Pontius for instance, far 
more generous and high-spirited than Regulus himself. 
This we are bound to scrutinize carefully and to mete out 
stern justice to those who seem to deserve it. We could 
hardly wonder if, under the circumstances, Regulus had 
been put to death as soon as he was taken prisoner by a 
nation which must have been stung to the quick by his 
insolent bearing in the hour of his success, and which 
showed so little mercy to its own defeated generals ; but 
it is so far from being true that Regulus was put to death 
with horrible tortures by the Carthaginians that there is 
reason to believe that he died a natural death, and that 
the story of the tortures was invented to cover those 
which had been really inflicted on two noble Carthagin¬ 
ian prisoners by a Roman matron. No writer before the 
time of Cato knows anything of the cruel death of Regu¬ 
lus, and when once the legend had been set going, wc 
find that there are almost as many different versions as 
there are authors who refer to it. Moreover, the silence 
of Polybius, the most trustworthy of historians, who re¬ 
lates the exploits of Regulus in detail, and whose chief 
fault it is that he is too didactic—seldom adorning a tale, 
but always ready to point a moral—is in itself sufficient 
to outweigh the vague rhetoric and the impassioned 
poetry of the late Republic. 

On the other hand, as has been already hinted, we 
have the authority of a fragment of Diodorus Siculus for 
a story, which, when we remember his anti- 
Carthaginian bias, we can scarcely suppose o f x “™j ) natlon 
that he invented, of the shocking cruelties 
inflicted on Bostar and Hamilcar, two Carthaginians 
given over by the Roman Senate to the wife of Regulus, 


74 


Rome and Carthage. 


as hostages for the safety of her husband. Regulus died 
—so clearly implies Diodorus—a natural death ; but 
his widow thinking, in her vexation, that there had been 
neglect or cruelty on the part of the Carthaginians, 
ordered her sons to fasten the two captives into a cask 
of the smallest possible dimensions, and kept them there 
five days and nights without food or water, till Bostar, 
happily for himself, died of the torture and the starva¬ 
tion. In that same cask she kept the living and the dead 
for five more days, by a cruel kindness supplying Ham- 
ilcar with just so much food as might serve to keep life 
in him and enable him to realize the horrors of the situ¬ 
ation. At last the advanced putrefaction of the body 
roused the pity of even the servants of the Atilii. They 
brought the matter before the tribunes of the people 
and Hamilcar came forth from his living death and wa* 
protected from further violence by the more merciful 
people. To palliate the story of the foul cruelty of the 
widow of Regulus, for which the Romans at large were 
certainly not responsible, was invented, as seems likely, 
the story of the cruel death of Regulus himself. 


CHAPTER VI. 


HAMILCAR BARCA AND THE SIEGE OF LILYBAIUM. 


(b. c. 250-241.) 


The victory which the Romans had won before Panor- 
mus nerved them to make a strenuous effort for the 


Cartha¬ 
ginian for¬ 
tresses in 
Sicily. 


expulsion of their enemies from Sicily. The 
Carthaginians were now hemmed up in the 
north-western corner of the island ; and of 
all their former possessions, the three for 



Siege of Lilybtzum. 


75 


cesses of Lilybaeum, Eryx, and Drepanum alone re¬ 
in lined to them. If the first of these could by any 
means be taken, the other two would not offer any pro- 
i nged resistance. The war might then, once again, be 
transferred to Africa, and the Romans, whose proud 
boast it was that they first learned from their enemies 

d then surpassed them, would be able to prove to the 
Carthaginians that this war was no exception to the rule. 
Fourteen years had passed since the war had broken 
out, and both sides were fully alive to the vital impor¬ 
tance of the crisis at which it had arrived. 

With the siege of Lilybaeum, b. c. 250, opens the last 
scene of the First Punic War. It is the last scene, but a 
long and tedious one. The siege is one of 
ihe longest known in history. Strictly his- Lifybaum 
torical as it is, it equals in length the mythi- 
al siege of Troy, and the semi-mvthical siege of Veii. 
i he Romans distinguished themselves in it by their he- 
1 >ic perseverance, and by little else ; but it was that kind 
i f heroic perseverance which lay at the root of most of 
what they achieved, and is not, after all, so far removed 
from genius. The Carthaginian defence was marked by 
Vd the versatility and inventiveness, the prudence and 
the daring which characterize the Phoenician race; 

bove all it was marked by the appearance on the scene 
of at least one real military genius, the great Hamilcar 
Barca. 

Lilybaeum was built upon the promontory which 
formed the extreme western point of Sicily. It was the 
point nearest to Africa and directly fronted 
ihe Hermaean promontory. It was there- ancMmpor- 
fore, so long as it remained in the hands of tance - 
the Carthaginians, the most important support to their 
;>ower in Sicily. It would be a standing menace even to 


76 Rome and Carthage. 

their home rule in Africa as soon as it should pass into 
the hands of their enemies. It possessed a fine harbour, 
to the capabilities of which the name given to it by the 
Arabs in mediaeval times of Marsa Allah, or the Har¬ 
bour of God, still bears witness (Marsala). But the en¬ 
trance to it was rendered difficult by the constant winds 
that blew off the headland, and by the treacherous sand¬ 
banks and sunken reefs which lay off the shores; and 
these, if they were dangerous to the inhabitants who knew 
them well, would be doubly dangerous to an enemy who 
did not. Pyrrhus, a few years before, had overrun all 
the rest of Sicily with ease; but the impetuosity of his 
assault had been beaten back by the solid walls of Lily- 
bffium. Would the Romans succeed where Pyrrhus had 
tailed ? They saw that a place so situated and so defend¬ 
ed could only be attacked with any hope of success by a 
strong army and a strong fleet at once, and they supplied 
them ungrudgingly. 

Two consular armies, consisting of five legions and 
two hundred vessels, appeared before the place. The 

first attack was directed against the wall 
Opening of which stretched from sea to sea right across 

siege. _ ° 

the peninsula on which the city was built, 
and the immediate success obtained by the Romans was 
such as appeared to promise an early termination of the 
siege. By regular approaches the Romans worked their 
way up to the city wall, undermined some of its towers, 
and when these had fallen, brought up their battering- 
rams to threaten the whole line of defence. But Hi- 
milco, the commander of the garrison, was a man of 
energy and of fertility of resource. By building a sec¬ 
ond wall behind the first, he made the weakening of the 
first to be of small importance. He met the mining 
operations of the enemy by countermines, and he 


Efforts to relieve Lilybceum. 


77 


quelled, by his address and personal influence over the 
better disposed of the mercenaries, a formidable con¬ 
spiracy which had broken out among them to betray the 
town to the Romans. 

Meanwhile the Carthaginians, knowing the weakness 
of their naval force off Lilybaeum, and fully conscious 
that the place could not hold out unless re¬ 
lieved from home, made vigorous efforts to Efforts to 
throw succour into it. Hannibal, son of 
Hamilcar, was despatched with all haste to Sicily, with 
fifty ships and 10,000 troops. He moored his fleet 
among the ALgatian Isles opposite to Lilybaeum, waiting 
for the moment when he should be able to face, with 
some slight chance of success, the double dangers of 
the Roman squadron, and the rocks and reefs that girt 
in the harbour. A favouring, although a violent, wind 
sprang up. He spread every inch of his canvas, and 
massing his troops on deck to be ready for an engage¬ 
ment, with that happy rashness which is the truest pru¬ 
dence, he made his way in safety through the narrow 
entrance, while the Roman guardships remained at 
anchor close by, the sailors stupidly looking on, aghast 
at his rashness, and expecting to see him dashed to 
pieces upon the rocks. The sea walls of the city were 
thronged with the eager inhabitants, hoping, as it 
seemed, against hope, that some few of the ships might, 
by a lucky chance, pass safely through; and amid their 
loud cheers Hannibal rode into the harbour under full 
sail, without losing a single vessel, and deposited in 
safety his 10,000 troops and his stores of provisions. 

His example was contagious. A Rhodian mercenary, 
of the same name, volunteered with a single vessel to 
do as he had done. Again and again he ran the block¬ 
ade, and found his way out in safety, as though he bore 

G 


78 Rome and Carthage. 

a charmed life, through the midst of the Roman ves¬ 
sels which were drawn up at the entrance 

Hannibal the 0 f t p e harbour for the very purpose of 
Rhodian. 

preventing his escape. Doubtless he held 
the clue to the dangerous navigation of the straits, which, 
now that the buoys were removed, no enemy could dis¬ 
cover. Each venturesome visit breathed fresh courage 
into the garrison, and spread fresh despondency in the 
blockading fleet, while it enabled the Rhodian to com¬ 
municate to the Carthaginian government the wants and 
wishes of their beleaguered subjects. The Romans tried 
to block up the entrance to the harbour by sinking ships 
fil ed with stones in its narrowest part; but the depth of 
the sea and the violence of the current, helped by op¬ 
portune tempests, carried them away and opened the 
passage again. It seemed that the sea was never going 
to desert its favourites, when, in an unlucky moment, a 
Carthaginian quadrireme ran ashore upon a part of the 
mole which the Romans had just sunk, and fell into 
their hands. They immediately manned it with their 
own men, and lay in wait for the return of the Rhodian. 
He had run the blockade once too often ; and in trying 
to force his way out he was followed by a vessel whose 
speed and build convinced him that she must be of 
Carthaginian workmanship, though the rowers who 
propelled her were clearly Romans. Finding that he 
could not escape by flight, he turned boldly round and 
charged the enemy. But a trireme had no chance 
against a quadrireme. It was taken prisoner, and the 
adventurous Rhodian’s vessel henceforward formed part 
of the blockading squadron of the very fortress which 
it had done so much to relieve. 

The condition of the Roman army was not an enviable 
one. A plague had broken out in their camp, occasioned 


Character of Claudius. 79 

partly by the unhealthy climate, partly by the want of 
bread—a want which all the efforts of their Arrival and 

zealous ally, Hiero of Syracuse, could character of 

J Claudius, 

not meet. The Romans were ordinarily 

vegetarians, and the abundant supply of meat which they 
had till very recently received from the Sicilian flocks and 
herds had not mended matters. And now to complete 
the tale of their misfortunes, P. Claudius was sent out to 
take the command (b. c. 249), a man who proved to be 
as incompetent as he was arrogant, and who mistook, if 
our accounts do not do him injustice, severity for disci¬ 
pline, violence for strength, and childish weakness for 
manly courage. Despising alike the consuls who had 
preceded him and the officers who served under him, 
he first renewed the attempt to block up the mouth of 
the harbour, as though a Claudius must succeed where 
others had failed; and when the waves showed that they 
had no more respect for patrician than for plebeian blood, 
he determined, as though the siege of Lilybaeum was 
not enough to occupy his energies, to attack Drepanum, 
fifteen miles away, in hopes of taking Adherbal and his 
fleet there by surprise ! His generals remonstrated, and 
the sacred chickens—so the augurs reported—refused to 
eat. “ If they will not eat, they shall drink,” said he, 
and ordered them to be flung into the sea. It is possible 
that this story may have been invented to account for 
the calamity that followed; but the words attributed to 
Publius have a genuine Claudian ring about them. 
“ Neither gods nor men should stay a Claudius from 
his purpose!” The generals were browbeaten into 
compliance. Ten thousand troops had just arrived 
from Rome. Claudius put the best of them on board 
nis vessels to serve as marines, and there was no lack 
of volunteers for the enterprise, not probably because 


8o 


Rome and Carthage. 


they trusted the abilities of the consul, but because any¬ 
thing seemed better than a blockade which was no 
blockade at all. 

The fleet set out at midnight, and by daybreak its 
foremost ship had reached the entrance of the harbour 

of Drepanum. The surprise was complete. 
Battle of Adherbal, knowing how hard pressed the 

Drepanum. 0 A 

Romans were at Lilybaeum, ignorant that 
they had been reinforced, and ignorant also of the 
character of the new consul, had never dreamed that 
they would molest him at Drepanum. He who would 
attempt it must be either a fool or a military genius, and 
Rome, in this war at all events, had not been fertile of 
either. A respectable mediocrity had hitherto been the 
order of the day alike among the Romans and the 
Carthaginians. But Adherbal was not disconcerted. 
Determined not to be besieged, like Himilco at Lily- 
baeum, he set his rowers to their work, and summoning 
by the sound of the trumpet the mercenaries from the 
city to the beach, he addressed them in a few stirring 
words, and then, distributing them over his ships, he led 
the way in his own ship out of one side of the sickle¬ 
shaped harbour of Drepanum, while Claudius was still 
hovering near the entrance of the other. Surprised at 
this, and fearing in his turn to be enclosed between a 
hostile navy and a hostile town, Claudius turned round, 
hoping to make his way out of the harbour by the way 
he had entered it. But the signal could not reach the 
whole of the long column round the headland at once, 
and it was with difficulty that the consul got all his ships 
out of the trap into which he had drawn them, and 
arranged them in line of battle close along the coast, 
their prows pointing towards the fleet of Adherbal, which 
was already in line, and ready, with superior forces, to 


Battle of Drepanum. 


81 


bear down upon them. In the battle which ensued we 
hear nothing of the Ravens of Duillius. When the ships 
did close with one another there was hard and free 
fighting, for the decks carried the pick of either army; 
but in every other respect—the build, the number, and 
the speed of their ships, the experience of their rowers, 
and the space for manoeuvring—the advantage was 
with the Carthaginians. The Roman ships, when hard 
pressed, could not retire behind the line, for there was 
no room left between it and the shore ; and for the same 
reason they could not give help to one another in their 
distress. The consul, as he was the first to get into the 
mess, was also the first to get out of it. He took to 
flight, and his example was followed by the thirty ships 
nearest to him. It was well, perhaps, that he did so; 
for the whole of the remainder, ninety-three in number, 
fell into the hands of the Carthaginians, who, it is said, 
did not lose a single vessel. 

Whether Publius cared aught for the lives he had 
thus thrown away we are not told ; but probably his 
sister, some years afterwards, expressed pretty accurately 
the family feeling for the loss of the mere rabble of the 
fleet. She was taking part as a Vestal Virgin in a pro¬ 
cession, and when the crowd pressed upon her more 
closely than she liked, she was heard to exclaim that she 
wished her brother were alive to get rid of some more 
of them at sea. Loud must have been the curses of 
the Roman army at Lilybaeum when the consul brought 
back the news of his own defeat and flight; and deep, 
certainly, was the resentment of the Roman Senate at 
his reckless incapacity. He was recalled; and, being 
ordered to nominate a Dictator in his stead, he named, 
with true Claudian effrontery, a freedman of his family, 
M. Claudius Glycia; but he was shortly after put on 


82 Rome and Carthage. 

his trial, and met with the punishment which he de¬ 
served. 

The blockade of Lilybseum, such as it was, was for 
the time practically at an end, and the Romans were 
more anxious to keep the troops who were 
of third already there from starving than to supple- 

Roman fleet. men t their number or to make the blockade 
effective. A fleet of 800 merchant vessels, laden with 
supplies of every kind, and convoyed by 120 ships of war, 
was despatched from Rome, and reached Syracuse in 
safety. Anxious to take on board the provisions offered 
him by the ever-zealous Hiero, the consul, L. Junius 
Pullus, lingered awhile at Syracuse with half his fleet, 
while he sent forward the other half towards its destina¬ 
tion. But the Carthaginians were on the look-out for 
them. Adherbal, admiral at Drepanum, was determined 
to push his victory to the utmost. After sending as tro¬ 
phies to Carthage the ships which he had taken, he 
despatched his vice-admiral Carthalo first to Lilybaeum, 
to attack the remainder of the Roman fleet which had 
taken refuge there, and thence to Heraclea, to await the 
arrival of the provision ships. The advanced portion of 
the Roman convoy, hearing of the approach of Carthalo, 
and unable to offer battle or to take to flight, ran into the 
nearest roadstead on that inhospitable coast, and pro¬ 
tected themselves, as best they could, by the military 
engines planted on the cliffs above. Carthalo, not caring 
to run unnecessary risk, and sure now of his game, kept 
watch at the mouth of a river hard by till they should be 
obliged to move. Meanwhile the other portion of the 
Roman fleet had left Syracuse, had rounded Pachynus, 
and was sailing quietly along the coast in ignorance of 
the close proximity of their own and of the enemies' ships. 
To prevent the junction of the two fleets Carthalo ad- 


Mount Eryx. 


83 


vanced to meet them, and they too, knowing their weak¬ 
ness, made for the nearest shore, a spot which, unfortu¬ 
nately for them, had neither harbour nor roadstead, and 
was exposed to every wind that blew. Carthalo, sure of 
his game, now lay-to in the offing, half way between 
them, pinning with his small fleet the two much larger 
ones to the shore; but the weather-wise Carthaginian 
pilots saw the signs of a coming storm, and warned the 
admiral, while there was yet time, to make for shelter. 
He sailed round Pachynus eastward and was in calm 
water, leaving the storm to take care of the Romans ; and 
the storm did take care of them. Some of the crews, in¬ 
deed, escaped to land, but the 800 ships were broken into 
fragments, “ not a plank of them remaining,” says Poly¬ 
bius, “ which could be used again," and for miles along 
the coast the hungry foam was discoloured by the corn in¬ 
tended for the famishing Roman army before Lilybaeum. 

When this sad news reached Rome—the destruction 
of a third fleet by the waves and the undisputed mastery 
of the sea won back by the Carthaginians 
in the fifteenth year of the war (b.c. 249)— Eryx " 1 

there were symptoms of despondency even 
in the Roman Senate ; but the consul Junius was among 
tho e who had escaped from the wreck, and he made his 
way to Lilybaeum, burning by some signal achievement 
to wipe out the blame which he felt might be thrown 
upon him. Nor was he disappointed. A few miles to 
the north of Drepanum, between it and Panormus, and 
standing back a little from the coast, rises a mountain 
then called Eryx, and now known by the name of St. 
Giuliano. It stands by itself and, rising to a height of 
some 2,000 feet in solitary grandeur, is so imposing an 
object that ancient geographers and historians mention 
it in the same breath as ALtna, which is really four times 


8 4 


Rome and Carthage. 


its height. Right on its summit stood a temple of im¬ 
memorial antiquity, dedicated to Venus, and celebrated 
for the wealth which it had amassed and had managed 
to retain amidst the vicissitudes of all the conflicts that 
had raged around it. It had been taken and retaken 
many times in the long contest between Dionysius 
of Syracuse and Carthage, and more recently it had 
fallen before the assault of Pyrrhus; but, revered alike 
by Sicilians and Phoenicians, by Greeks and Romans, 
it had escaped plunder even at the hands of the adven¬ 
turous prince who did not spare the wealthy sanctuary 
of Proserpine at Locri. Half-way up the mountain was 
a city which was not so proof against all the storms that 
blew as was the temple on its top, for it had been par¬ 
tially destroyed by the Carthaginians in this war, and its 
inhabitants transferred to Drepanum; but heaps of its 
buildings must have still remained, and it was evidently 
still an important position for defence. Of this natural 
stronghold—mountain, fallen city and temple, one of 
the only three strongholds that still remained to the Car¬ 
thaginians in Sicily, the consul Junius managed to get 
possession by a sudden attack, and held it firmly against 
any similar surprise from the enemy in the closely ad¬ 
joining Drepanum. 

Such was the general condition of affairs (b. c. 247) 
when the great Hamilcar, “the man whom Melcarth 
protects,” appeared upon the scene. Hamil- 
Barca Car car ^arca was t ^ ie head of the great family 
named after him the Barcine—the word 
Barca is the same as the Hebrew Barak—and well did 
Hamilcar justify the name which succeeding ages have 
always coupled with his and his alone of his family, by 
the “ lightning ’’ rapidity with which, in this the sixteenth 
year of the war, he would now sweep the Italian coast 


Mount Ercte. 


85 


with his privateers, now swoop down and carry off a 
Roman outpost, and anon would seize a stronghold, 
which the terror of his name alone rendered impregna¬ 
ble, under the very eyes of an opposing army. Equally 
great as an admiral and a general, after ravaging the 
Roman coasts from Locri to Cumae, he landed suddenly 
in the neighborhood of Panormus and seized the com¬ 
manding elevation called Ercte (now Monte Pellegrino). 
This hill, like Eryx, rises to a height of about 2,000 feet, 
but, unlike it, on two of its sides rises sheer from the sea ; 
a third side rises equally perpendicular from the plain, 
while on the fourth alone, which directly faces Panormus, 
at the distance of a mile and a half, is the plateau at all 
accessible. This stronghold Hamilcar seized, and this 
he held for three years in sight of the Roman garrison at 
Panormus, and in the near view of a fortified camp 
placed almost at its base, in spite of all the efforts of the 
Romans to dislodge him, and, when he left it, he left it 
only of his own free will to occupy a similar, though a 
less advantageous, position elsewhere. 

The place was admirably adapted for his purpose. 
At its base was a little cove into which his light ships 
might run laden with the spoils of Italian 
or Sicilian towns, accessible from the high Ercte. 

ground occupied by his troops, but not ac¬ 
cessible from any place on shore. There was an abun¬ 
dant spring of water on the very summit, and above the 
precipitous cliffs that underpinned the mountain was a 
broad plateau which in that delicious climate Hamil¬ 
car found that, even at such an elevation, he could cul¬ 
tivate with success. A rounded top which crowned the 
whole as a post of observation commanding the country 
round, and, in case of need, would serve as an acropolis 
where no one of the defenders need die unavenged. 


86 


Rome and Carthage. 


Exhaustion 
of Romans. 


But neither the success of the consul Junius at Eryx, 
nor the presence of a master spirit among the enemies—■ 
which the Romans could not fail to see— 
could now rouse the Senate to take the 
active measures which the times required. 
The drain upon the resources of the State had been too 
enormous. The muster-roll of the citizens had fallen in 
the last five years from 297,000 to 251,000—a sixth part 
of the whole. The As, the unit of value among the 
Romans, which had originally weighed twelve ounces of 
copper, had now fallen, as Pliny tells us, to two ounces, 
to one-sixth, that is, of its former value. The State was 
bankrupt, and the Senate could neither make up their 
minds to withdraw altogether from the war, nor yet to 
prosecute it with the necessary vigour. They still made 
believe to continue the blockade of Lilybseum ; but the 
seas were open to the Carthaginians, and every one 
knew that as long as the seas were open to them they 
might laugh at all the efforts of the Roman armies. 

Nor were the Carthaginians on their part more self- 
sacrificing or more far-sighted. Finding that the Ro¬ 
mans had retired from the sea they cut 
down their navy by a wretched economy 
to the narrowest possible dimensions, and 
were quite content if only they could supply with food 
their heroic garrisons at Lilybaeum and at Drepanum, 
not to make an effort to reconquer any of the places 
which had so recently belonged to them. Having light¬ 
ed at last upon an able general, they would not, indeed, 
interfere with his making the best use he could of the 
small band of mercenaries whom they had given him at 
so much a head, and, so far as they were concerned, he 
might utilize his few ships to collect supplies; but not to 
them must he look henceforward for more ships or men. 


Neglect of 
Cartha¬ 
ginians. 


Greatness of Hamilcar. 


87 


The war, or his part of the war at all events, must hence¬ 
forward support itself. If Hamilcar, they argued, was 
successful in his venturous enterprises, so much the bet¬ 
ter for them ; if unsuccessful, he and not they lost. 

Hence the five or six long and listless years of war 
which followed the appointment of Hamilcar; discred¬ 
itable enough to the governments of the 
contending states, but redounding to the HamUcar. ° f 
honour of that one heroic soul who, learning 
from the past the lesson which no Carthaginian general 
had yet been able to learn, applied it to the exigencies 
of the moment with a patience, a perseverance, and an 
energy which seemed more than human ; and conscious 
all the time, as it would seem, that his efforts were, for 
the present at least, foredoomed to failure, was yet con¬ 
tent to sacrifice himself if only he might prepare the 
way for vengeance in the remoter future. What mat¬ 
tered it if Sicily was lost ? A greater Sicily might be 
found beyond the seas in Spain ; a new world might be 
called into existence to redress the balance of the old. 
In that great coming struggle Africa should turn back 
the tide of aggression upon Europe, and Rome, not 
Carthage, should tremble for her safety. Hamilcar 
Barca was not far wrong. The genius of the son carried 
out what the father had planned and had prepared. 
The army of Hannibal, welded by the spark of his 
genius out of the most unpromising materials into one 
homogeneous and indissoluble whole, was the legitimate 
counterpart of the small band of mercenaries trained 
so painfully by Hamilcar. The ultimate result of 
Hamilcar’s patient struggles on Mount Ercte was the 
victorious march of Hannibal on Rome. 

To explain a little. Hamlcar saw that the real defect 
under which the Carthaginians had laboured all along 


88 


Rome and Carthage. 


had been the want of a trustworthy infantry. Their 
cavalry was excellent; their elephants more 
His plans. than once had borne down all before them ; 
their ships had been beaten, not by skill, but by brute 
force. But as long as they were without a body of in¬ 
fantry who, man for man, could stand up against the 
Roman legionaries, so long it was impossible that they 
could beat their enemies. The mercenaries who formed 
the bulk of the Carthaginian armies had sold their ser¬ 
vices to Carthage for gold; what wonder if they trans¬ 
ferred their services at the critical moment to those who 
would appraise them more highly ? What wonder that 
Lilybaeum had been all but betrayed, and that the tem¬ 
ple of Eryx itself was on the point of being seized by 
Gallic deserters from the Carthaginian army ? To the 
task of remedying these defects Hamilrar addressed 
himself with a patience and a self-restraint which is the 
more surprising the more conscious he must have been 
of his own superlative talents for aggressive war upon a 
mighty scale. By enforcing strict discipline at any 
price; by never fighting a battle, and therefore never 
risking a defeat; by maintaining a daily and hourly 
warfare with the Roman outposts, he gradually trained 
his troops to face the terrors of the Roman presence, as 
the Romans on their part had at last trained themselves 
to face the terrors of the elephants. Knowing that he 
could expect no efficient aid from Carthage, he deter¬ 
mined, if possible, to save her in spite of herself. To 
attach the mercenaries to Carthage by ties of gratitude 
or respect or patriotism was impossible; but it might 
not be impossible to attach them to himself by that close 
tie which always binds soldiers to a general whom they 
can alike fear and trust and love, and then to utilize that 
attachment not for his own but for his country’s good. 


Mount Eryx. 


89 


How nobly Hamilcar carried out his resolve every 
action of his life proves. Day after day he would sally 
from his mountain fastness, like a lion from 
its den, on the fair plains of Sicily. Unob- H,s achieve- 
served or unattacked, he would pass by the 
Roman camp placed at the foot of the mountain, and 
return with the supplies necessary to keep his small 
force from starving. Once we hear of him even at Ca- 
tana, on the east coast of the island. His galleys, in 
the same way, would harry or alarm the coast of Italy 
even as far as Cumae. Never was a more harassing 
warfare waged, and yet there is little to record. Poly¬ 
bius remarks, that it is as impossible for the historian 
to do more than state these general facts, as it is for the 
spectator at a prize-fight either to see or to describe the 
blows rained by practised pugilists on one another when 
the contest is nearing its end. They know, perhaps, 
the strength and the skill of the combatants; they hear 
the heavy thud, and they see the lightning lunge ; they 
note the result, but they cannot accurately observe or 
recount the process. So was it with Hamilcar ; and yet 
it must be remembered that the struggle was hardly at 
present a life-and-death struggle, for the Romans seem 
never to have tried seriously to beard the lion in his den, 
and Hamilcar, with his handful of troops, can hardly 
have hoped to raise the siege of Lilybaeum. At most he 
might distract the attention of the Romans and impede 
their progress. 

So things might have gone on forever, when Hamilcar 
(b. c. 244) surprised even the Romans—though by this 
time they could hardly have been surprised 
at anything Hamilcar did—by voluntarily E^yx elzes 
abandoning the stronghold endeared to him 
by three years of hair-breadth escapes and romantic 


9° 


Rome a?id Carthage. 


adventures, and attacking Mount Eryx, a stronghold 
which lay nearer indeed to the beleaguered Carthaginian 
cities of Drepanum and Lilybaeum, but in all other re¬ 
spects was less advantageous, and at that very time was 
held in force by the Romans. He managed to dislodge the 
garrison from the ruined city half way up the mountain; 
but he failed in all his efforts to take the temple on the 
summit, occupied as it then was by a band of Gallic de¬ 
serters, who had been taken into their pay by the Ro¬ 
mans, and who, since they carried their lives in their 
hands, were prepared to sell them as dearly as possible. 
Here, then, once more, was Hamilcar on an isolated hill, 
two miles from the coast, and therefore beyond the reach 
of immediate succours from his galleys, with a band of 
desperate enemies above him, and a Roman army en¬ 
camped below! Well might it seem that a single stre¬ 
nuous and united effort on the part of the Romans might 
bring Hamilcar to his knees, or that at all events he 
might be starved into a surrender. But this was not to 
be. For two more years did Hamilcar hold out in this 
most impossible of situations, fighting, says Polybius, 
like a royal eagle, which, grappling with another eagle 
as noble as himself, stops only to take breath from sheer 
exhaustion, or to gather fresh strength for the next at¬ 
tack. The war was fought out elsewhere, and its issue 
was decided by men of other mould and making than 
the royal soul of Hamilcar. 

It must have long since been apparent to the Roman 
Senate that unless they could fit out a fleet more effective 
g ^ than any that had preceded it, Drepanum 
effort of and Lilybaeum might hold out forever, and 

Romans. that while they held out, their own hold on 

the rest of Sicily must be precarious. They had built 
four fleets since the war began, and all had been utterly 


Last Efforts on both Sides. 


9* 


destroyed; with what conscience could they now propose 
to throw more public money into the gulf, and to com¬ 
mit themselves to the mercies of the hostile and insatia¬ 
ble sea ? Even if they should decree a property tax, it 
was doubtful—such was the general distress—whether it 
could be levied. But where public enterprise failed, it 
should be recorded to the eternal credit of the Romans 
that private citizens were forthcoming who volunteered, 
either singly or in combination, to furnish ships of war 
to make up another fleet. If the venture should prove 
successful, the State might repay them, should it like to 
do so, at its own time. If it failed, as every fleet had 
failed before, they would have done nothing more than 
their duty, and duty must be its own reward. A good 
model was found in the Rhodian’s vessel which had 
been captured off Lilybasum; and, as if to complete the 
dramatic history of this unlucky craft, the very trireme 
which had performed such prodigies of speed and daring 
for the Carthaginians in the siege of Lilybseum was now 
to reproduce itself in the shape of two hundred Roman 
vessels, which should raise the siege of that very town, 
and bring the war to its conclusion. 

The consul, C. Lutatius Catulus, took the command 
of this pre-eminently patriotic armament early in the 
year B. C. 242 ; and once again Roman ships 
of war were to be seen riding in the har- Supreme 
bours of Drepanum and Lilybaeum. Hamil- Cartha- 
car could now no longer receive supplies by s imans - 
sea, and unless he could break out in force, his surren¬ 
der was, as it seemed, only a question of time ; but the 
Carthaginians, hearing of the danger, and finding to 
their surprise that a Roman navy was again in Sicilian 
waters, made for the first time a serious effort to sup¬ 
port him. For four long years Hamilcar had borne the 


92 


Rome and Carthage. 


brunt of the conflict, without receiving supplies of men 
or money from home, and, now that they were about to 
lose him, the Carthaginians awoke to a consciousness of 
his true value. But a fleet could not be built in a day, even 
by the Carthaginians; and by the time the transports— 
for they were transports rather than ships of war—reached 
Sicily, Catulus had, by dint of constant training, trans¬ 
formed his landsmen into tolerably experienced sailors. 

In March of the following year (b. c. 241), Hanno, 
the Carthaginian admiral, made for Hiera, one of the 
yEgatian Isles, in hopes of being able from 
yEgatian thence to communicate with Mount Eryx. 
Islands. His pj an was t 0 land his heavy cargo of 

corn there, to take on board instead the pick of Hamil- 
car’s men, and above all the great Hamilcar himself, 
and then, and not till then, to fight a decisive action. 
Catulus had already selected the best from among the 
Roman troops before Lilybseum to serve the same pur¬ 
pose on board his ships ; and he now made for .Egusa, 
the principal of the yEgatian Isles, with the intention of 
cutting off Hanno from the shore, and bringing on a 
general action. On the morning of his intended attack 
a strong wind sprang up from the west, the very thing 
which the Carthaginians needed to carry them rapidly 
into Drepanum. To intercept them the Romans would 
have to contend against wind and tide as well, and from 
this even the bravest mariners might shrink. Catulus, 
or rather the Praetor Q. Valerius—for Catulus was laid 
up by a wound—knew the odds against him, and hesi¬ 
tated for a moment to face the risk ; but reflecting that 
if he did not strike a blow, the enemy would be able to 
take Hamilcar on board, and that Hamilcar was more 
formidable than any storm, he determined to close with 
the lesser of two dangers. Down came the Carthaginian 


Battle of Atgatian Isles. 


93 


ships, heavy with their cargo of corn, but flying before 
the wind with all their sails spread, and the rowers using 
their oars as well. When they saw the Romans ventur¬ 
ing out on such a sea to intercept them, they struck sails 
and prepared for action. But the battle was over almost 
as soon as it began. After the first shock, the well-made, 
slightly-built Roman ships, with their practised crews 
and their veteran soldiers, obtained an easy victory over 
the awkward and heavily-laden Carthaginian vessels, 
with their inexperienced rowers and their raw recruits. 
Fifty of the Carthaginian ships were sunk and seventy 
taken, the remainder escaping with the help of an oppor¬ 
tune wind to Hiera. 

This great victory, the victory of the yEgatian Isles, 
ended the war. Both sides had played their last card, 
and the Carthaginians had lost. Their spirit 
was not altogether broken ; but it was im- 
possible to fit out a new fleet in time to re¬ 
lieve Hamilcar, and they wisely resolved, by utilizing 
his great name and the indefinite possibilities of his 
future when driven to stand at bay, to obtain more fa¬ 
vourable terms than would otherwise have been offered 
them. We could hardly wonder if Hamilcar had de¬ 
clined the thankless duty, and had left the task of sur¬ 
rendering Sicily to those who far more than himself were 
responsible for it. But no thought of self seems ever 
to have entered his great soul. For his faithful band of 
followers and their honour he was jealous ; but of his own 
feelings of outraged pride and righteous indignation we 
hear nothing. He rejected with scorn the ungenerous 
proposal of Catulus that his troops should give up their 
arms and pass under the yoke; and it was arranged 
that when peace should have been concluded, they 
should depart with all the honours of war. 

H 


94 


Rome and Carthage. 


The terms of peace were then agreed upon by Catu- 
lus and Hamilcar, subject to the subsequent ratification 
by the Roman people. The Carthaginians 
peace S ° f were to surrender Sicily to the Romans, and 
to bind themselves not to wage war on Hiero 
or his allies ; they were to restore the prisoners they had 
taken without ransom, and to pay within the next twenty 
years a war indemnity of 2,200 talents. The Roman 
people were not satisfied with these conditions; but the 
plenipotentiaries who were sent out to the spot contented 
themselves with raising the indemnity by half as much 
again, while they halved the time in which it was to be 
paid. The easy terms thus granted—so far easier than 
those demanded by Regulus fifteen years before in the 
hey-day of his success—are to be explained partly, no 
doubt, by the exhaustion of the Romans themselves, but 
partly also by the dread they felt as to what Hamilcar 
might still dare, if driven to desperation. As such it is 
the noblest homage paid by the conquerors to the mili¬ 
tary genius of the “unconquered general of the con¬ 
quered nation.” Two individuals, and two only in the 
whole course of Roman history, seem by the mere fact 
of their existence to have inspired real terror into the 
Roman heart. The one was Hamilcar Barca, the other 
his, perhaps, still greater son. 

So ended the First Punic War; the longest war, says 


Polybius, the most continuous, and the greatest which 

the world had then seen ; and it may be 

Gains and questioned, even now, whether there has 
losses. 1 

ever been a war in which the losses were so 


frightful, and the immediate gain to either party so small. 
The Romans had indeed gained Sicily ; but Sicily with 
the exception of the dominions of Hiero, which were 
still to belong to him and not to the Romans, was then 


End of First Punic War. 


95 


drained of everything which made it worth having. Its 
territories had been ravaged, its population swept away, 
its towns destroyed one after the other. Greek as well 
as Phoenician enterprise and civilization had been al¬ 
most blotted out. The island has never entirely recov¬ 
ered its prosperity. Its soil is still in great part unculti¬ 
vated, its population is one of the most degraded in 
Europe. To set against this equivocal gain, the Romans 
had lost 700 ships of the line, containing not less than 
70,000 men, and army after army had fallen victims to 
starvation, to pestilence or the sword. The Carthagin¬ 
ians, on their part, had lost 500 ships of war, but the 
crews which manned them, and the soldiers who formed 
the staple of their armies, were such as, in their callous 
indifference, they could bear to part with ; for more were 
to be had for money from their still vast recruiting ground. 
The richness of their soil, and the abundance of their 
irrigation had already repaired the injury done by Reg- 
ulus. They had been driven indeed from Sicily; but 
had not the Phoenicians been driven before, in like 
manner, from Crete, from Cyprus, and from Asia Minor? 
What mattered it if, with the enterprise and buoyancy 
of their race, they could still found new colonies, and 
build up a new empire in countries whither the Romans 
had never penetrated, and of which they had hardly yet 
heard the names ? 

Everything portended an early renewal of the con¬ 
flict on a more gigantic scale. Rome by crossing the 
narrow straits of Messana had entered on her career, 
for good or evil, of universal conquest and aggression. 
Carthage was still mistress of the western half of the 
Mediterranean, and had no intention of voluntarily re¬ 
tiring from it. More than this: Hamilcar Barca was 
still alive—Hamilcar Barca, with his patience and his 


96 


Rome and Carthage. 


genius, with his burning patriotism and his thirst for re¬ 
venge ; above all, with his infant son. 


CHAPTER VII. 


HAMILCAR BARCA AND THE MERCENARY WAR. 


(B.C. 241-238.) 

The twenty-two years which separated the First from 

the Second Punic War were not years of rest to either 

Rome or Carthage. The Carthaginians had 

Events be- barely concluded peace when they found 

and second that they had to face dangers far more terri- 
Punic wars. . 

ble, and toes far more implacable than any 
they had met with in the twenty-three years’ war from 
which they had just emerged. The Romans, on their 
part, busied themselves in organizing their newly con¬ 
quered province ; in appropriating to themselves, with 
shameless meanness and injustice, the island of Sardinia, 
the oldest foreign possession of the Carthaginians, and 
that which, next after Sicily, had been the object of her 
most jealous precautions ; in suppressing Illyrian piracy 
and extending their northern frontier from the Apen¬ 
nines to the Alps. Let us bridge over the interval be¬ 
tween the war of Hamilcar and the war of Hannibal, 
not by describing these events in detail; but by touch¬ 
ing on them just so far as they bring into clear light the 
dealings of either nation with their dependencies, or as 
they directly influenced the mightier struggle which was 
looming in the distance. 

The great Hamilcar, during his three years of war- 



Revolt of Mercenaries. 


97 

fare at Mount Ercte, had managed to make the war sup¬ 
port itself; but during the last two years at 

Eryx, when he was cut off from the sea, and Treatr »ent of 

J mercenaries, 

was hard pressed by enemies alike on the 

peaks above and in the plains below him, he had found 
it difficult enough to procure the bare necessaries of life 
for his troops, and he had been able to pay them by 
promises, and by promises only. That he was able to 
keep his band of fickle barbarian followers in so dan¬ 
gerous a position for a couple of yArs without remuner¬ 
ating them for their services, and yet without any symp¬ 
tom of mutiny or insubordination on their part, is not 
the least striking testimony to his commanding personal 
qualities. When the war was finished he handed them 
over, with spirits still unbroken, to Gcscon, the Cartha¬ 
ginian commander at Lilybaeum, and to Gescon fell the 
disagreeable duty of transporting them to Africa, and of 
informing the home government of their obligations to¬ 
wards them But the party then in power at Carthage 
were at once short-sighted and unscrupulous. They 
neither paid the mercenaries their arrears of pay, nor 
told them boldly that they could not do so. 

Things soon assumed a threatening aspect. The muti¬ 
neers to the number of 20,000 marched for Carthage and 
pitched their camp near Tunis ; and the gov¬ 
ernment, thoroughly frightened, began to Revolt °f 
cringe when they could no longer threaten, 
and sent out provisions to be sold at a nominal price in 
the hostile camp. This only made the mutineers despise 
them the more. New promises and new concessions 
were met by new and more exorbitant demands. The 
mutiny had come to a head. It had found leaders in 
Spendius, a runaway Campanian slave, in Matho, an 
African, who had served with distinction in Sicily, and 


98 Ro?ne and Carthage. 

in Autaritus, a Gaul. Gescon, who, in a fit of impatience 
at the insolence of their demands, had let slip the wish 
that the malcontents would lay their demands before 
Spendius and not before him, was taken at his word. 
He was thrown into chains; the money he had brought 
with him was seized, and the war began. Messengers 
were at once despatched by Spendius and Matho to the 
peoples of Africa summoning them to liberty ; the joyful 
news spread from village to village, and was enthusiasti¬ 
cally responded to by*the natives. 

Men flowed in so plentifully that the rebel generals 
were able at once to begin the siege of Utica and Hippo 
Zarytus, the two places which, alone of the 
Rising of surrounding African and Phoenician cities, 
had hitherto signalized themselves by their 
attachment to the oppressor. Money was so abundant 
that Spendius was able not only at once to discharge all 
the arrears of pay to his troops, but also to meet all the 
immediate expenses of the war. The Carthaginian gov¬ 
ernment had never yet been in such sore distress. In a 
moment they had been cut off from the rich districts 
which supplied them with food, which filled their treasury 
with money, and their armies with their best troops. 
They had no ships, for their last fleet had just been 
destroyed in Sicily, and they had no independent allies, 
for it was the fate of Carthage—the fate, it must be added, 
she too well deserved—never to possess any. It was 
useless to treat for peace with men who were loaded with 
the accumulated wrongs of centuries, and were burning 
for revenge. The natives remembered the crucifixion of 
3,000 of their countrymen, the finale of their partial and 
unsuccessful attempt at revolt during the invasion of 
Regulus a few years before; and they were determined 
that this revolt should be neither partial nor unsuccess- 


Hanno and Hamilcar. 


99 


ful. Bitterly must the Carthaginians have rued their 
cruelty when they reaped its natural consequences, when 
they found that the proverb “ as many slaves, so many 
enemies,” was in their case no figure of rhetoric, but the 
stern and simple truth. 

Among the magistrates who had acquired the special 
confidence of the governing clique at Carthage by the 
amount of money which they had squeezed 
out of the subject communities, no one was HamU°car d 
more conspicuous than Hanno, and he it 
was whom they now selected for the chief command in 
the Libyan war, a sad omen of the character which it 
was likely to assume. Hanno was the personal enemy of 
Hamilcar, and was as incapable as he was self-confident. 
If he won a partial success he failed to follow it up, and 
after having won, as he thought, a complete victory, he 
allowed his camp to be surprised and taken. The gov¬ 
ernment in its distress was obliged to apply to Hamilcar, 
the man whom they had treated so ill in Sicily, and whom 
they had treated worse still in the persons of his trusted 
veterans when the war was over. But Hamilcar, still 
placing his country before all else, consented to serve the 
government which had betrayed him. He induced or 
compelled the easy-going citizens to enlist, and having 
got together a force of seventy elephants and 10,000 men, 
he managed to slip through the armies, which, stationed 
as they were, one at Utica and the other at Tunis, had 
almost cut Carthage off from Africa ; and then, by his 
strict discipline, by his energy, and by his influence with 
the Numidian chiefs, he defeated the enemy in a pitched 
battle and, over-running the country, recovered several 
towns which had revolted, and saved others which were 
being besieged. Deserters, some of them, doubtless, 
veterans of his own, came over to his side; and Spendius 


IOO 


Roiiie and Carthage. 


and Matho, fearing wholesale desertions, determined to 
cut down their bridges and burn their boats, by involving 
the whole force in an act of atrocity which not even 
Hamilcar could forgive. 

Panic is always cruel, and the panic of barbarians, if 
. ss culpable, is far more uncontrollable than the panic of 
civilized men. By a well-laid plan Spendius 
The trace- and M a tdio contrived to create such a panic. 

iess war. . r 

Those who counselled moderation were 
greeted with the cry of‘‘Treason, treason!” or "Smite him, 
smite him ! ” and when in this way a reign of terror had 
been established, the Irreconcilables carried everything 
their own way. Gescon, "the soldier’s friend,” lay 
ready to their hand. He and his company of 700 men 
were led out to execution, and, having been cruelly 
mutilated, were thrown, still living, into a ditch to perish, 
and from that day forward the war deserved the name 
by which it is known in history, the “ war without truce,” 
or the “ Inexpiable War.” 

Upon its horrors we need not here dwell. Suffice it to 
say that Hamilcar was driven to make reprisals for the 
barbarities of the Libyans by throwing his 
am/'cnd° r prisoners to be trampled to death by the 
elephants, and the war was henceforward 
in the literal sense of the word, internecine The Car¬ 
thaginian government managed, even in this supreme 
hour to thwart Hamilcar by allowing his inveterate 
enemy Hanno, discredited as he was, to share the com¬ 
mand with him. Nor was it till after the quarrels which 
ensued had led to many reverses; till the news arrived 
of the total destruction of their own ships in a storm, of 
the revolt of Hippo and of Utica, the towns which alone 
had been faithful to Carthage in the invasions of Aga- 
thocles and Regulus ; above all, till the news had come 


Etui of Trucelfss War. 


IOI 


of the insurrection of the mercenaries in Sardinia, and 
the probable loss of that fair island, that the Carthagi¬ 
nians allowed the voice of the army to be heard, and 
committed to Hamilcar once again the sole command. 
Hamilcar soon penned the Libyans in their fortified 
camp near Tunis, and so effectually cut them off from 
all supplies that they were driven to eat first their pri¬ 
soners and then their slaves; and it was not till they had 
begun to look wistfully upon one another that some of 
the chiefs, with Spendius at their head, came forth to 
ask for the parley which they had themselves forbidden. 
Hamilcar demanded that ten of the mercenaries, to be 
named by himself, should be given up, while the rest of 
the army should be allowed to depart unarmed with one 
garment each. This having been agreed upon, Hamil¬ 
car immediately named Spendius and his fellow legates, 
and threw them into chains. The rebel army, thinking, as 
well they might, that Hamilcar had been guilty of sharp 
practice, flew to arms. They were still 40,000 in number, 
but they were without leaders, and they were extermi¬ 
nated almost to a man. Matho still held out at Tunis, 
and when Spendius was crucified by Hamilcar in front 
of its walls, Matho, by a sudden sally on the other side 
of the town, took a Carthaginan general prisoner, and 
shortly afterwards crucified him with fifty others on the 
very spot which had witnessed the last agonies of Spen¬ 
dius. A horrible interchange of barbarities ! The army 
of Matho was soon afterwards cut to pieces. The rebel 
chief himself was taken prisoner, and, after being led in 
triumph through the streets of the capital, was put to 
death with terrible tortures (b.c. 241-238). So ended 
the Truceless War, after a duration of three years and 
four months, with the total extermination of those who 
had made it truceless; “a war,” says Polybius, and he 


102 


Rome and Carthaoe. 


says truly, “by far the most cruel and inhuman of which 
we had ever heard.” 


CHAPTER VIII. 

HAMILCAR BARCA IN AFRICA AND SPAIN. 

(b. c. 238-219.) 

During the desperate struggle for life on the part of the 
Carthaginians which has just been related, the Romans 
had, on the whole, behaved with moderation, or even 
with generosity, to their conquered foe. Had it pleased 
them to make one more effort and once 

Rome during . -it-. , r . 

Mercenary again to risk a Roman army upon Afri- 

VVar ‘ can soil, when they were invited to do so by 

the revolted Uticans and by the mercenaries themselves, 
there can be little doubt that Carthage would have fallen, 
and that there would have been no Second and no Third 
Punic War to relate ; and had they dreamed of what lay 
deep hidden in Hamilcar’s breast, or of the vast mili¬ 
tary genius which was being reared amidst those stormy 
scenes in his infant son, no exertion would have appeared 
too great to make, and no danger too desperate to dare, 
even to the cautious Roman Senate. 

But when the genius of Hamilcar had saved Carthage 
and an expedition was being fitted out by the government 
to recover Sardinia which had revolted, the 
sica and Romans, professing to believe that the arma- 

Sardmia. m e nt was intended to act against them¬ 
selves, and hatching up various fictitious grievances, 
threatened the Carthaginians with instant war if they 
dared to molest those who had thrown themselves on 
their protection. It was an act of unblushing and yet, at 
the same time, hypocritical effrontery on the part of the 



Peace and IVar Parties at Carthage. 103 

Romans, hardly less base, and certainly more inexcus¬ 
able, than had been their support of the Mamertines. 
But the Carthaginians had no choice but to submit to the 
right of the strongest, and they gave up not Sardinia 
only, but such parts of Corsica as they had ever claimed, 
and were compelled also to atone for their warlike in¬ 
tentions by paying an indemnity of 1,200 talents to the 
outraged and peace-loving Romans. Hamilcar once 
more showed his greatness by submitting to the in¬ 
evitable ; but the iron must have entered into his soul 
more deeply than ever, and he must have bound himself 
by still more binding oaths, if such could be found, to 
drink the cup of vengeance to the dregs when the time 
should come, or to perish in the attempt. 

It might have been thought that the incapacity of the 
governing classes at Carthage and the double disasters 
which they had brought upon the country 
would have so seriously discredited them war pa ‘ r ties 
that Hamilcar Barca and his Patriotic Party at Carthage, 
would for a time, at all events, have been supreme in the 
State; but so far was this from being the case that, while 
Hamilcar was returning redhanded from the desperate 
victory which had saved the State, the party of Hanno 
was strong enough and impudent enough to place the 
deliverer upon his trial. He had been—they did not 
scruple to assert—the cause of the Mercenary War, for 
he had made promises of pay to his troops which he had 
not been able to perform ! But it was beyond the power 
or the impudence even of the Carthaginian Peace Party 
to find him guilty, and the indictment seems to have 
fallen by its own weight or its own absurdity. There 
had been sharp conflicts for some time past between the 
War and the Peace Party, between the reformers and 
the reactionaries, at Carthage; and the events of the 


104 


Rome and Carthage. 


last few years had made the distinction between them 
sharper still. Around Hanno—called, one would think in 
irony, Hanno the great—gathered all that was ease-loving, 
all that was short sighted, all that was selfish in the great 
republic. The commercial, the capitalist, the aristocrat- 
ical interests seem, on the whole, to have followed his 
lead. Around Hamilcar Barca, on the other hand, 
gathered all that was generous and far-sighted ; all, in 
fact, who were not content to live in peace, knowing 
that after them would come the deluge. Jewish kings, 
and those by no means the worst of their race, were 
often consoled when they heard on their repentance 
that the evil should come not in their own but in their 
sons’ days. Not so was Hamilcar Barca and not such 
were his followers. But he was the head of a minority 
only, and finding that it was impossible to bring the 
majority over to his way of thinking, or to reform them 
by pressure from without, he determined to accept, or, 
it may be, to demand, a post in which he could serve 
his country more effectually. He obtained from the 
fears, the hatred, or the hopes of those opposed to him, 
the command of the army, an appointment which, for 
different reasons, must have been equally acceptable to 
his friends and his enemies. He first stamped out the 
embers of the Libyan revolt which were still smoulder¬ 
ing in the country to the west of Carthage, and then, 
accompanied by the fleet, made his way slowly along 
the Mauritanian coast towards the immediate goal of 
his long-cherished schemes. When he reached the 
Pillars of Hercules (b. c. 237), on his own undivided re¬ 
sponsibility, he crossed the straits and set foot in anoth¬ 
er country and another continent. 

It was a bold step, but it was a wise one. If Carthage 
was to be saved at all from the ruin which Hamilcar and 


Hamilcar crosses to Spam. 


io 5 


all keen-sighted men saw impending over it, it must be 
by Hamilcar and Hamilcar’s army. But 
where in Africa could he raise an army ? crosses 0 to 

and how, when it was raised, could he have Spam, 
fed it there ? The merchant princes of the city who, 
under the pressure of necessity, had enrolled themselves 
in his ranks to defend their all, had returned to their 
businesses or their pleasures as soon as the immediate 
danger was over. His own veterans, and thousands of 
other Libyans who under his training might have be¬ 
come as valuable as they, had been, by the most tragic of 
necessities exterminated by Hamilcar himself in the late 
war; and he could hardly hope just then to enlist 
others who could serve him as their predecessors might 
have done. A few of his Sicilian officers indeed, still 
followed the banner of their chief, and a few devoted 
friends and members of his family were left behind at 
Carthage, and these last, if they held no office in the 
State, showed that they could do more. If they were 
not allowed to govern, their ability and their patriotism 
yet gave them the divine right to rule. Of this nothing 
could deprive them ; and, like the Medici at Florence, 
or the Dukes of Orange in the Netherlands, this half- 
outlawed Barcine family actually received foreign em¬ 
bassies and concluded foreign treaties, as an independ¬ 
ent body, co-ordinate with the Senate itself ! But offi¬ 
cers alone cannot make an army, and the Barcine fami¬ 
ly, powerful as it was, could not induce the money-loving 
Carthaginian merchants to untie their purse-strings in 
support of the distant and chimerical projects of Hamil¬ 
car. Nothing could be done at Carthage without mon¬ 
ey ; and it was necesary for Hamilcar, if he would hold 
his own, not only to pay his troops but to remit large 
sums to Carthage in order to keep his supporters there 
together and to maintain his influence. 


106 Rome and Carthage. 

Now it must have seemed to the eager eye of the Car¬ 
thaginian patriot as though Spain had been created for 
the very purpose of supplying all these various and con¬ 
flicting wants. It was from Spain, if from anywhere, 
and by Hamilcar, if by anyone, that Carthage might be 
saved. The previous history of the Spanish peninsula, 
and its immemorial connection with the Phoenicians, the 
fathers of the Carthaginian race, were all in favor of his 
projects. It was from Tarshish, or Tartessus, the dis¬ 
trict abutting on the very straits which he had to cross, 
that, as far back as the time of Solomon, had come the 
strange animals and the rich minerals which were land¬ 
ed in the harbours of Phoenicia proper, and which had so 
enlarged the ideas and transformed the instincts of the 
untravelled and exclusive Israelites. In more recent 
times Gades (Gaddir), on almost the same spot, itself a 
Phoenician colony, and boasting of a splendid temple to 
Melcarth, the patron god of both Tyre and Carthage, 
had served as an emporium for the products alike of the 
Scilly Isles and the Niger. For centuries Phoenicians 
had thus found in Spain what, centuries after, Spain 
herself was destined to find in Mexico and Peru ; and it 
was principally to maintain her connection with this 
Eldorado that that long line of factories, known in later 
time as the Metagoiiitce Urbes, had been planted at equal 
distances on the most suitable points of the barren Mau¬ 
ritanian coast. It was no slight advantage, too, for Pla- 
milcar's purposes, that the connection of Spain with Car¬ 
thage had hitherto been commercial only and not impe¬ 
rial ; otherwise the deadly hatred which accompanied 
the spread of the Carthaginian rule in Africa must have 
sprung up in Spain as well, and Hamilcar would have 
had as much to do in pulling down as in building up, 
and his great constructive genius would not have had 
free play. 


Death of HamiLar. 


107 


It was into such a land of promise that Hamilcar now 
passed. Its gold and silver mines, worked hencefor¬ 
ward by Phoenician enterprise and skill, 
yielded many times as much as they had an d death of 
ever yielded before. With part of the pro- Hamilcar. 
duce Hamilcar paid the Spaniards themselves who had 
flocked to his standard ; but, as with his Libyan followers 
at Ercte and at Eryx, it was the spell of his personal in¬ 
fluence, far more than the gold he was now able to pro¬ 
mise, and to give them, which kept them ever afterwards 
indissolubly attached to him. Part he remitted annually 
to Carthage, as the price he paid to her for being allowed 
to carry out his schemes for her safety and her empire. 
His soldiers, his generals, his own son-in-law, Hasdrubal, 
intermarried with the natives and made their interests 
one with their own. For nine long years -years to which 
Polybius, unfortunately, has devoted scarcely as many 
lines—Hamilcar worked steadily on, with his eyes, in¬ 
deed, fixed upon the distant goal, but using no unworthy 
means in order to reach it; and when the end was al¬ 
most in view, when it seemed that he might himself car¬ 
ry out his magnificent schemes, he died a soldier's death, 
fighting sword in hand, and left to the “lion’s brood,” 
as he loved to call—and well might he call—his sons, 
the rich but the dangerous heritage of his genius, his va¬ 
lour, and his undying hatred to Rome. We know all 
too little of Hamilcar’s heroic struggles in Sicily, of his 
death-grapple with the revolted Libyans, and of the 
achievements of the last nine years of his life, alike in 
peace and war, in Spain. Did we know more, the world 
would, in all probability, admit that, in capacity if not in 
performance, in desert if not in fortune, he was the equal 
of his wonderful son. But we know at least enough to 
justify the judgment passed half a century later by one 


io8 


Rome and Carthage. 


who was, assuredly, no friend to Carthage, and yet who, 
in spite of his narrow Roman prejudices, and his “ De- 
Icnda est Carthago ,” judging solely by the traces he saw 
in Spain of what the great man had done pronounced 
emphatically that there was “ no king like Hamilcar.’’ 

Hamilcar died in battle in the year B. c. 228. His 
son, Hannibal, was then not quite nineteen years of age, 

and was too young at once to succeed his 
Hasdrubal father; but the command did not pass out 

in bpain. ’ r 

of the family. It devolved on Hasdrubal, 
the son-in-law and faithful companion of Hamilcar, one 
who was endowed with something of his military talents 
and with no small part of his influence over men. The 
empire which Hamilcar had founded in Spain Hasdru¬ 
bal organized and enlarged. Above all, he gave it a 
capital in New Carthage, a town which, from its admi¬ 
rable situation on the south-east coast, from its con¬ 
venient harbour, and from its proximity to some rich 
silver mines which were just then discovered, seemed 
destined to be all that its proud name implied, and to 
spread the Phoenician arts and empire in Europe and 
the ocean beyond, even as the old Carthage had spread 
them over the Mediterranean and in Africa. Tribe after 
tribe of Iberians solicited the honour of enrolling them¬ 
selves as subjects of a power which knew how to 
develop their resources in the interest of the natives 
as much as in its own; which found them work to 
do and paid them well for doing it; and when Hasdru¬ 
bal, b. c. 221, in the eighth year of his command, fell 
by the hand of a Celtic assassin, he had extended, in 
the main by peaceful means, the rule of the Barricades 
from the Baetis to the Tagus. 

Hannibal was now in his twenty-sixth year. The 
soldiers unanimously proclaimed him commander-in- 


HannibaFs Vow. 


109 

chief, and their choice was ratified by the Carthaginian 
government. He was still young for the herculean 
task which lay before him; but he was 
strong in the blood of Hamilcar which was Hannibal’s 
flowing in his veins, strong in the training 
which he had received, strong above all in the con¬ 
sciousness of his religious mission ; none the less so that 
the secret of it lemained locked in his own breast till all 
chance of fulfilling it in its entirety had passed away for¬ 
ever. It was not till he was an old man, living in exile at 
the court of King Antiochus, but, even so, an object of 
suspicion and of terror alike to the Syrian King and to 
the Roman Senate, that he told the simple story of that 
which, far more than military ambition, more even than 
the love of country and the consciousness of his su¬ 
preme ability, had been the ruling motive of his life. 
In his ninth year, so he told Antiochus, when his father, 
Hamilcar, was about to set out for his command in Spain, 
and was sacrificing to the supreme god of his country, he 
bade the attendants withdraw, and asked the little Hanni¬ 
bal if he would like to go with him to the wars. The boy 
eagerly assented. “Lay your hand then,” said Hamilcar, 
“ on the sacrifice and swear eternal enmity to the Ro¬ 
mans.” Hannibal swore, and well did he keep his oath. 
It suits the purposes of Livy to say that Hannibal was a 
man “ of worse than Punic faith, with no reverence for 
what was true or sacred, serving no god and keeping no 
oath.” The accusation is untrue in every point; but 
even Livy must have himself admitted that to this oath, at 
least, he was true, that this God at least he reverenced, 
and that this religious mission he kept before his mind 
and carried out to the best of his superlative ability, from 
that day even to the day of his death. From the age of 
nine to eighteen he had watched in silence the patient 


I 


I IO 


Rome and Carthage. 


development of his father’s far-sighted designs. From 
eighteen to twenty-five his had been in the main, the 
hand to strike and the will to carry out, while Hasdru- 
bal’s had been the mind to plan and the right to com¬ 
mand ; and now in his twenty-sixth year he was called 
upon to stand alone, to enter upon his great inheritance 
of obligation, and by his patience and his impetuosity, 
by his powers of persuasion and of command, by his 
energy, and his inventiveness, by his arts and by his arms 
to redeem his early pledge. 

But why had the Romans been looking calmly on 
while the Barcine family were winning back for them¬ 
selves, and for the State at large in Spain, 

Gallic war all, and more than all, that they had lost in 
m Italy. \ J 

Sicily ? They had to face a formidable 
enemy nearer Rome. The whole of the region to the 
north of the Apennines and the Rubicon still belonged 
to the Gauls, and one of their tribes, the Boii, who dwelt 
between the Apennines and the Po, frightened at the 
work of the popular champion Flaminius—the division 
of the lands which had once belonged to their Senonian 
brethren amongst the poorer citizens of Rome—and 
fearing that their own turn would come next, determined 
to anticipate the evil day. A movement amongst the 
Gauls was known by a name of terror (tumult us ) even 
in the later days of the Republic, and at this time the 
memories of the Allia and of the burning of Rome were 
too fresh to allow the Roman Senate to take any half¬ 
measures. A Gallic man and woman were buried alive 
by order of the Senate in the Ox market, in hopes of 
thus fulfilling the dread oracle which promised a share 
of Roman soil to the Gauls. A levee en masse of the 
military resources of the confederation was decreed; 
and those actually under arms in various parts of the 


Battle of Telamon. 


111 


Roman dominions are said by Polybius to have reached 
the astonishing number of 170,000 men. “ Against such a 
nation under arms,” as Polybius significantly adds, Han¬ 
nibal was on the point of marching with 20,000 men ! 

But the terrors of the Gauls were destined, on this oc¬ 
casion (b. c. 225), soon to pass away. The Transpadana 
barbarians, who fought, many of them, 
stark naked, with two javelins (gasa) in Telamon 
their hands, or with swords that bent at the 
first blow, fell an easy prey to the skilful dispositions of 
the Roman armies. Surrounded by the two consuls 
near Telamon in Etruria, they were almost exterminated, 
and the Roman Capitol was filled with the standards 
and the golden necklaces and the bracelets which were 
the trophies of the victory. The Romans followed up 
their success with vigour, and transferred the war into 
the enemy’s country. The Boians suffered the fate 
which they had anticipated and which they had in vain 
tried to avert, and the name of Italy might be now ex¬ 
tended, on the east of the peninsula at all events, to the 
line of the Po. In the following year, C. Flaminius, a 
man whose name has been already mentioned, and of 
whom we shall hear again at a critical point in the Sec¬ 
ond Punic War, led a Roman army, for the first time in 
their history, across that river and, attacking the Insu- 
brians, took their capital city, Mediolanum (Milan) ; 
while Marcellus, the consul of the year b. C- 223, was 
able to dedicate, in the temple of Jupiter Feretrius, the 
spolia opima which he had taken in single combat from 
the Gallic chieftain. The Romans riveted their grasp 
on their new conquests by founding, more suo , two new 
colonies, Placentia and Cremona, on either side of the 
Po, and by completing that imperishable monument of 
their organizing and constructive genius, the Flaminia 


I I 2 


Rome and Carthage. 


Via, the great military road of Northern Italy, from 
Rome to Ariminum. Nor were these precautions taken 
a moment too soon ; for before the Romans had estab¬ 
lished themselves firmly on the line of the Po, Hannibal 
was on the Ebro ; and to the surprise of the Roman 
Senate, and the terror of not a few among the Roman 
citizens, it was now apparent for the first time that the 
approaching contest might possibly be waged, not in 
Africa for the possession of Carthage, but in Italy for 
the possession of Rome. 

But we must now return to Hannibal. During the 
first two years of his command (b. c 221-219) the young 
general had crossed the Tagus, and had re- 

Hannibal 

besieges duced the whole of Spain to the south of 

Saguntum. ]?b r0 to submission. But there was one 

exception. The town of Saguntum, a Greek colony — 
so the inhabitants boasted—from Zacynthus, and near 
the site of the modern Murviedro (Muriveteres), though 
far to the south of the Ebro, the stipulated boundary line 
between the two powers, had formed an alliance with 
Rome; and Hasdrubal, nay Hannibal himself, had up 
to this time forborne to attack it. Hannibal knew that 
he could choose his own time for picking a quarrel, and 
now the ground seemed clear before him. To the Ro¬ 
man ambassadors who came to warn him not to attack 
any ally of theirs, he gave an evasive answer, and re¬ 
ferred them to the Carthaginian Senate, while he prose¬ 
cuted the preparations for the siege with redoubled 
vigour. For eight months the Saguntines held out, and 
when they could hold out no longer, the chiefs kindled 
a fire in the market-place, and threw into it first their 
valuables, and then themselves. Hannibal, who had 
been wounded in the course of the siege, divided a part 
of the booty amongst his troops; a part he dispatched 


War declared. 


”3 


to Carthage, in hopes of committing those who received 
it beyond the hope of recall to his great enterprise. He 
then retreated into winter quarters at New Carthage, 
and, dismissing his Spanish troops to the enjoyments of 
their homes for the winter, bade them return to the camp 
at the approach of spring, prepared for whatever it might 
bring forth. 

The Romans had by their dilatoriness allowed Sagun- 
tum to fall; but they were now not slow in demanding 
satisfaction for it. An embassy was sent 
direct to Carthage demanding the surrender ^ciared 
of Hannibal, the author of the outrage, on 
pain of instant war. The Romans fondly hoped that 
the Carthaginian peace party would seize the opportu¬ 
nity of compassing their chief end at the easy price of 
the surrender of so troublesome a servant, or master, as 
was Hannibal. But the gold of Hannibal had done its 
work, and was more potent than Hanno's honeyed 
tongue. The peace party dared hardly to mutter their 
half-hearted counsels; and when Q. Fabius, the chief of 
the embassy, held up his toga, saying, “ I carry here 
peace and war; choose ye which ye will have;”—“Give 
us whichever you please,” replied the Carthaginians. 
“War, then,” said Fabius; and the decision was greeted 
as is usual in times of such excitement, by the short¬ 
sighted acclamations of the masses. They feel the en¬ 
thusiasm of the moment; they do not realize its tremen¬ 
dous responsibility. They see with their mind’s eye the 
pomp and pride and circumstance of war; they do not 
see its horrors and devastations. They hear the din of 
preparation; they are deaf, till it is too late, to the cry 
of agony or to the wail of the bereaved; else war would 
never, as experience proves it so often is, be welcomed 
as a boon; it would be submitted to only as the most 
dire necessity. 


114 


Rome and Carthage. 

The die was now cast, and the arena was cleared for 
the foremost man of his race and his time, perhaps the 
mightiest military genius of any race and of any time— 
one with whom, in this particular, it were scant justice to 
compare either Alexander, or Caesar, or Marlborough, 
and who, immeasurably above him as he is in all moral 
qualities, may, on the score of military greatness, be 
named without injustice in the same breath with Napo¬ 
leon, and Napoleon alone. 


CHAPTER IX. 

SECOND PUNIC WAR. 

(B. C. 218-201.) 

PASSA GE OF THE RHONE AND THE ALPS. 

B. C. 2l8. 

There was still a brief interval of preparation before the 
rival nations could meet in battle array, and Hannibal 
utilized it to the utmost. ^He took measures 
ofHannVbaT f° r ^ le sa ^ et y 0 f Spain during his absence 
by garrisoning it with 15,000 trusty Libyans, 
while Libya he garrisoned with as many trusty Spaniards, 
thus making, in a certain sense, each country a security 
for the good behaviour of the other , j The supreme com¬ 
mand in Spain he committed tohis younger brother, 
Hasdrubal, and during the winter friendly messages 
passed and repassed between New Carthage and the 
chieftains of Transalpine and Cisalpine Gaul. It is said 
that negotiations were carried on even with Antigonus, 
king of Macedonia, to arrange for a combined attack on 
Italy from east and west at once. 

But was Italy to be reached by land or sea ? The 



Hannibal determines to go by Land. 115 

Phoenicians had not yet lost their maritime skill; the sea 
was their home , and, had the Carthaginians 
so willed it, a fleet might have been fol- mines togo 

lected in the harbour of New Carthage which by land - 

probably could have bidden defiance to any that the 
Romans could have raised against it. Why, then, did 
Hannibal, the greatest product of the Phoenician race, 
perhaps of all the Semitic races—and certainly the no¬ 
blest embodiment of the national spirit and will of Car¬ 
thage—prefer a land journey which involved the cross¬ 
ing of broad and rapid rivers, of lofty and unknown 
mountain chains, amidst races proverbial for their fickle¬ 
ness and faithlessness; a journey which would take 
months instead of days, and which, if it failed at all, 
must fail altogether ? Was it that the Carthaginian go¬ 
vernment was backward or unable to supply the ships ? 
or was it that Hannibal miscalculated the distance and 
under-estimated the dangers of the route which he chose ? 
Perhaps both in part. It is no slur upon the military 
qualities of the great Carthaginian to suppose that he did 
not fully realize the difficulties of the task he was under¬ 
taking, a task which no description given by interested 
and friendly mountaineers could have brought adequate¬ 
ly home to him. But what, no doubt, especially deter¬ 
mined him to make the attempt was the alliance which 
he had already concluded with the formidable tribes of 
Gaul itself and of Northern Italy. Swooping down from 
the Alps on the rich fields of Italy, his numbers swelled 
by the reinforcements he would have gathered in his 
course from Farther Gaul, he would, by a first success, 
rally all their brethren in Hither Gaul to his standard. 
The basis of his operations for the Italian war would 
then be no longer Spain or Gaul, but Italy itself; and it 
would be strange indeed if the Samnites and the Etrus- 


x i6 


Rome and Carthage. 


cans, the Umbrians and the Lucanians, whom Rome 
had so recently and so hardly conquered, did not flock 
to his standard as he swept victoriously on towards the 
South to wreak condign vengeance on the common op¬ 
pressor of them all. Such were the hopes, not altogether 
ill-founded, with which Hannibal undertook the gigantic 
enterprise which astonished and still astonishes the 
world. 

The army with which he set out from New Carthage 
early in the summer of B. C. 218, consisted of 90,000 foot, 
of 12,000horse, and of thirty-seven elephants; a force 
far smaller than that which the Carthagi- 
Size of his ginians had often employed before in their 
petty conflicts with the Sicilian Greeks. He 
crossed the Ebro, and, not without heavy loss to himself, 
subdued the hostile Spanish tribes beyond that river who, 
so far as a treaty could make them so, were already the 
allies of Rome and, as the Romans believed, a firm bul¬ 
wark against Carthaginian encroachments. Leaving 
Hanno with 10,000 foot and 10,000 horse to hold the coun¬ 
try which he had conquered, he actually sent back to their 
homes 10,000 more of his already much-thinned army, 
men whom, like Gideon at the Well of Trembling, he saw 
to be faint-hearted and therefore cared not to retain in his 
service. Then, confident in those that remained, and in 
the future, he crossed the Pyrenees and, without opposi¬ 
tion from the Gallic tribes, reached the Rhone in safety. 

The Romans, as behind hand in their arms as in their 
diplomacy, still, it would seem, believed that the con¬ 
test which was beginning would be fought out at a 
distance from their own shores. Scipio, as 
had been arranged, started from Pisa and, 
coasting leisurely along to Marsalia (Mar¬ 
seilles) learned to his extreme surprise that Hannibal 


Hannibal’s 
passage of 
the Rhone. 


Pass selected by Hannibal. 


1 1 7 


had already crossed the Ebro and the Pyrenees, and 
was in full march through Gaul. 

Well knowing that a prolonged delay might render 
the Alps impassable for that year, and, if for that year, 
perhaps forever, Hannibal, when he found that the 
Gauls were disposed to dispute his passage, had sent 
Hanno with a considerable force two short days’ march 
up the river to a point whence he could cross unopposed. 
After a brief pause to refresh his men, Hanno moved 
down the left of the stream and kindled the beacon fires 
for which Hannibal was anxiously waiting. He had 
already laden with his light-armed horsemen the boats 
which he had hired from the natives, while the canoes 
which he had extemporized were filled with the most 
active of his infantry, and he now gave the order to put 
across. The signal was obeyed with alacrity; and the > 
horses swam the stream, attached by ropes to the boats 
which carried their riders. Down poured the barbarians 
in disorder from their fortified camp, fully confident that 
they could bar the passage ; but the flaming camp be¬ 
hind them, and the fierce onset of Hanno’s force upon 
their rear, showed them that they had been out- 
generalled, and they fled in confusion, leaving Hannibal 
to transport the rest of his army in peace. The army 
rested that night on the Italian side of the river, and on 
the following day the most unwieldy, and not the least 
sagacious part of his force, the thirty-seven elephants, 
were cajoled, as at Messana, in the First Punic War, 
after the battle of Panormus, into entrusting themselves to 
a raft. Some, in their blind panic, leapt into the mid 
river, drowning their drivers; but raising instinctively 
their trunks above their heads, they reached the oppo¬ 
site bank in safety. 

But the real difficulties of the undertaking were only 


Rome and Carthage. 


now beginning. How little accurate knowledge of the 
localities through which he had to pass 

Al'pfsdected ! 6 Hannibal can have gained even by the 
most carefhl inquiries, is evident from the 
obscurity which has always hung over his march itself. 
That march riveted the attention of the world ; it was 
described by eye-witnesses, and one great historian, at 
least, who lived within fifty years of the events he was 
recording, took the trouble to go over the ground and 
verify for himself the reports which had reached him. 
Yet many of its details and even its general direction 
are stdl matters of dispute. The fact is that the an¬ 
cients, even the most observant of them, had no eye for 
the minute observation of nature, and no wish to de¬ 
scribe its phenomena in detail. Accordingly there is 
hardly a pass in the whole Western Alps which has not 
been made—as though they were cities contending for 
the honour of a Homer’s birth—to lay claim, with some 
show of reason, to be the scene of Hannibal’s march. 
Yet broad geographical facts, and the few data of time 
and place given by Polybius, enable us, in the light of 
recent researches, to restrict the choice to two, if not to 
one, of the total number. These passes are the Little 
Mont Cenis, to the north of the Cottian, and the Little 
St. Bernard to the north of the Graian Alps. Mont 
Cenis appears to have been unknown to the ancients as 
a practicable passage ; moreover it would have brought 
Hannibal down among hostile Ligurian tribes. The 
Little St. Bernard, on the other hand, was not only the 
easiest of approach and one of the lowest available 
passes, being only 7,000 feet high, but once and again 
in history, it had already poured down the Celts of the 
north upon the plains of Italy. It was in fact the high¬ 
way between Transalpine and Cisalpine Gaul. Where 


Valley of the here. 


n 9 

Celtic tribes had passed before, the expected ally and 
deliverer of the Celts might well pass now, and with this 
hypothesis nearly all the facts given by Polybius will be 
found to agree. On the Italian side of the pass lay the 
Salassians, the hereditary friends of the Insubrians, who 
would give their messengers, as they passed to and fro, 
a safe-conduct, and would secure to Hannibal himself 
the rest and refreshment which after his own passage he 
would so sorely need. 

He had crossed the Rhone at a spot " nearly four 
days' journey from the sea,” probably the reach above 
Roquemaure. He marched thence, we are 
told, four days up the river to the spot VaUeyofthe 
where the Isere joins the Rhone, the apex 
of the triangle, afterwards called the “ Island of the 
Allobroges.” It was then, as now, populous and well- 
cultivated, and Hannibal, it would seem, preferred to 
continue his march northward through its champaign 
country rather than to take the shorter route eastward 
by following at once the mountain valley of the Isere. 
There would be enough of mountain climbing later on. 
Accordingly he followed the course of ‘‘the river” 
northward, as far probably as Vienne ; then, turning 
eastward, he took the part of one of two rival brothers 
whom he found contending for the throne, and so ob¬ 
tained from him supplies of food and clothing and 
trusty guides. Then, once more striking the Rhone 
where it leaves the frontiers of Savoy, he reached the 
first outwork of the Alps, probably the Mont du Chat, a 
chain 4,000 feet high. 

Hannibal had taken ten days to cross the Island of 
the Allobroges, and had hitherto met with no difficulty 
or mishap of any kind ; but here, where the great phy¬ 
sical difficulties began, the first symptoms of open hos- 


I 20 


Rome and Carthage. 


The first 
ascent. 


tility appeared also. The native guides had returned to 
their master, and amidst the precipitous 
ravines the Numidian cavalry were no lon¬ 
ger formidable. The one track over the 
mountains, the Chevelu Pass, was occupied by the moun¬ 
taineers in force ; but Hannibal, learning that it was their 
practice to return to their homes for the night, lighted his 
camp fires, as usual, at nightfall, and, leaving the bulk 
of his army behind, climbed the steep in the darkness 
with the most active of his troops, and occupied the posi¬ 
tion which had been just vacated by the natives. Slowly 
and toilfully on the following day his army wound up the 
pass, aware that Hannibal was waiting to receive them 
at its head, but exposed to loss and to annoyance at 
every step from the attacks of the enemy who moved 
along the heights above. The path was rough and nar¬ 
row, and the horses and the sumpter animals, unused to 
such ground and scared by the confusion, lost their foot¬ 
ing, and either rolled headlong down the precipices 
themselves or, jostling against their fellows in the agony 
of their wounds, rolled them down with the baggage 
which they carried. To an army crossing a lofty moun¬ 
tain, baggage and provisions are a matter of life and 
death, and Hannibal risked his own life and those of his 
few brave followers to save the rest. Charging along the 
heights, he put the enemy to flight, and the immediate 
peril was surmounted. 

For the next three days Hannibal followed the 
Tarentaise, or the rich valley of the Isere, which he had 
struck on his descent from the pass, and 
The mam there was now no symptom of hostility or 

ascent. _ J r 

opposition. On the fourth day, the people 
whose homesteads he was passing, presented themselves 
to him, bearing garlands and branches of trees, the signs 


The White Rock. 


1 21 


of goodwill, and proffering provisions, nay, even host¬ 
ages, as pledges of their sincerity. But the wary Cartha¬ 
ginian was not to be deceived by a foe who offered him 
gifts. He received them kindly, accepted their provisions 
and their hostages, but pursued his march as one pre¬ 
pared for treachery. The cavalry and beasts of burden 
led the way, and at some distance behind came Hannibal 
himself with his infantry. They were now entering the 
defile which leads up to the main mountain wall of the 
Alps, theone barrier which still separated Hannibal from 
the land of his hopes, and the cliffs rose more precipi¬ 
tously above, and the torrent (the Reclus) foamed more 
angrily below, as they neared the spot where both would 
be left behind. 

Hardly were the infantry well entangled in the defile, 
when the stones which came thundering down from the 
heights above showed that the barbarians 
had at length thrown off the mask. The ™£ whlte 
destruction of the whole army seemed immi¬ 
nent ; but Hannibal drew up, or rather drew back, his 
part of it to an escarpment of white rock, which rose in 
a strong position facing the entrance of the gorge, far 
enough back, it would seem, to be out of the reach of the 
descending stones, but not so far as that he could not 
keep the attention of the enemy concentrated on himself. 
The cavalry at the head of the column pressed on almost 
unmolested till they emerged into more open and there¬ 
fore safer ground. The white gypsum rock —la roche 
blanche —as it is called by the natives, still stands con¬ 
spicuous in front of the grey limestone mountain which 
towers above it; and here, if at no earlier point in the 
route, the traveller may well feel that he is treading the 
very ground which Hannibal trod, and looking upon the 
solemn assemblage of peaks and pinnacles, of mountain 


122 


Rome and Carthage. 


torrent and of mountain valley, on which his eager eye 
must have rested in this supreme moment of anxiety 
and peril. Here Hannibal stood to arms, with half his 
forces, the whole night through ; and the following morn¬ 
ing everything like organized resistance had disappeared 
from the cliffs which flanked the pass. And on the ninth' 
day the whole cavalcade reached the summit in safety. 

It was only nine days since Hannibal had begun the 
first ascent of the Alps; but they were days of hard work 
and danger, and he now rested for a time to 
i he summit. recru ;t- his troops, and to allow stragglers 
|^£.rejoin him. But no strannlefs^ca me. Those who had 
dropped behind from exhaustion or from their wounds, 
on such a route, were not likely to be heard of more. 
Only some beasts of burden which had lagged behind, 
or had slipped down the rocks, had in the struggle for 
bare life managed to regain their feet, and, following in¬ 
stinctively in the footprints of the army, now came strag¬ 
gling in one after the other, half dead from starvation and 
fatigue. It was a sorry spot on which to recruit. It was 
late in October; the snows were gathering thick on the 
peaks above the Col; and the troops who had been drawn 
from burning Africa or from sunny Spain shivered in the 
mountain air, which is keen and frosty even in the height 
of summer. Rest only gave them time to recollect the dif¬ 
ficulties through which they had so hardly passed, and to 
picture, perhaps to magnify, perils which were still to come. 

Symptoms of despondency appeared; but Hannibal, 
seizing the opportunity, called his troops together and 
addressed them in a few stirring words. 
Hannibal’s There was one topic of consolation, and 

speech. 1 

only one. Below their feet lay one of the 
Italian valleys, and winding far away among its narrow 
lawns and humble homesteads could be seen the silver 



Descent of the Alps. 


123 


thread of one of the feeders of the Baltea torrent which 
leaped forth from where they stood. It seemed in the 
clear atmosphere, which Alpine climbers know so well, 
that they had but to take a step or two down, and to be 
in possession. “The people who dwell along that river,” 
cried Hannibal in the inspiration of the moment, “are 
your sworn friends. Ye are standing already, as ye see, 
on the Acropolis of Italy; yonder”—and he pointed to 
the spot in the far horizon where, with his mind’s eye, 
he could see the goal of all his hopes, and the object of 
his inextinguishable and majestic hate—“ yonder lies 
Rome.” The spirits of his men rose at his words, and 
on the morrow the descent began. 

After a toilsome climb, the first steps of a descent are 

always pleasantly deceptive, and there was now no sign 

of an enemy, unless indeed a few skulking 

marauders might be so called. But the de- Dangers of 
& the descent. 

scent was not less dangerous, and perhaps 
still more destructive, than the ascent. The Alps rise 
more sheer from the plain on the Italian than on the 
French side, and the slope is almost everywhere steeper. 
The snow too began to fall, hiding dangers which would 
otherwise have stared them in the face. A false step on 
such a gradient would have been fatal anyhow, and the 
curtain of snow made false- steps to be both numerous 
and inevitable. The army had to cross what seems to 
have been, in the greater cold which was then prevalent 
throughout Europe, a glacier or an ice-slope covered 
with a thin coating of newly-fallen snow. This was soon 
trampled into a solid sheet of ice, on which the men 
kept sliding and rolling down, while the beasts of bur¬ 
den, breaking through the bridges of frozen snow which 
concealed crevasses beneath, stuck fast and were frozen 
to death. At last, the head of the column reached a 


124 


Rome and Carthage. 


projecting crag round which neither man nor beast could 
creep. An avalanche or a landslip had carried away 
some three hundred yards of the track, and even the 
eye of Hannibal failed to discover a practicable route 
elsewhere. Destruction stared the army in the face; 
but Hannibal drew them off to a kind of hog’s back, 
from which the snow had been just shovelled, and, 
pitching his camp there, directed his men with such en¬ 
gineering skill, and with such implements as they could 
muster, to repair the broken passage. Never was an 
Alpine road made under greater difficulties; but the 
men worked for their lives, and by the following day the 
horses were able to creep round the dangerous spot, and 
to descend till they found a scanty herbage. The ele¬ 
phants, owing to their uncouth appearance, had hitherto 
enjoyed immunity from the attacks of the natives; but 
they too now had their share of suffering. It was three 
whole days before the roadway was sufficiently wide 
and strong for them to pass. On the high Alps on which 
they then were, neither tree nor pasture could be found, 
and from regions of Arctic rigour these inhabitants of 
the torrid zone made their way down, half dead with 
cold and hunger. After the great danger had been sur¬ 
mounted, the descent became more practicable. The 
eyes of the perishing soldiers were soon gladdened with 
the sight of umbrageous trees, of upland lawns, and 
even of human habitations, and three days saw them 
safe in the valley of Aosta below. 

The passage—1,200 stadia of mountain climbing—had 
been accomplished; but was it worth the price which 

had been paid for it ? Of the army which 
The passage had crossed the Pyrenees scarcely half had 

accomplished. . . 

lived to cross the Alps. Without provisions, 
without a commissariat, without even an assured base of 


Descent of the Alps. 



operations, or the certainty of reinforcements, Hannibal 
was about to enter on a war which stands forth without 
a parallel in ancient history. With 20,000 foot and 
6,000 horse he was about to attack a power which had 
only lately put into the field to serve against the Gauls 
an army of 170,000 men. And in what condition was 
this handful, this forlorn hope, of soldiers? The cold 
and hunger, and exposure and- fatigue, of fifteen days 
of mountaineering had done their work with them. 
“They had been reduced to the condition of beasts,” 
says the accurate and unimaginative Greek historian; 
“ they looked not like men but like their phantoms or 
their shadows,” said the Roman general who was about 
to meet them in the field, and, as he thought, like 
shadows to sweep them away. Under any general but 
Hannibal, and, it may also be added, with any enemy 
who were not so dilatory as the Romans, the remnant of 
the Carthaginian army would have conquered the Alps 
only to perish in the plains of the Po. That Hannibal 
crossed the Alps is a marvel; but that with troops so 
weakened he was able after a few days’ delay to chas¬ 
tise the hostile barbarians, to take from them their city 
of Turin, to force some of them to join his army, and 
then to face all the power of Rome, is a greater marvel 
still. 

It is difficult throughout this period of the war, and, 
indeed, throughout the whole of it, to withdraw the at¬ 
tention even for a moment from its presiding genius. 
With sound judgment did the Romans, who calumniated 
his character and tried sojnetimes to make light even of 
his abilities, calMhe war which was now h pmnninir 
not the Second Punic War, but the War o f Hannibal. 
His form it was which haunted their imagination and 
their memories; his name was for centuries the terror 
K 






126 


Rome and Carthage. 

of old and of young alike. Nearly two hundred years 
later the frivolous and the pleasure-loving Horace pays 
Hannibal the homage of a mention which is always se¬ 
rious and often awe-stricken. Once in his Odes he is 
“ the perfidious,” but three times over he is “ the dread 
Hannibaland rising, with a thrill of horror, into epic 
dignity, he compares the march of the. Carthaginian 
through Italy to the careering of the east wind over those 
Sicilian waters which had engulfed so many Roman 
fleets, or to that most terrible and magnificent of sights, 
the rush of the flames through a blazing forest of pines. 


CHAPTER X. 

BATTLES OF TREBIA AND TRASIMENE. 

(b. c. 218-217.) 

It is time now to ask what the Romans were doing to 
meet the storm. Publius Scipio, after his encounter with 
the enemy’s cavalry on the Rhone, had 
ofRoman marched up the river to the camp which 

Senate. Hannibal had just left, and discovering that 

he was already off for Italy had flattered his soldiers and, 
perhaps, himself, by representing his march as a flight. 
He showed, however, that he was himself alive to the 
gravity of the occasion by returning at once to Italy, wh’ ! /' 
he sent his brother Cneius with the bulk of his army on to 
Spain. As for the Senate, the last message that had 
reached them from that country had told them of the tak. 
ing of Saguntum, and they had accordingly despatched 
troops who were to stop Hannibal at the Ebro. The news 
they now received was to the effect that Hannibal had 
crossed, not the Ebro only, but the Pyrenees, the Rhone, 



Battle of Ticinus. 


127 


and the Alps, and he might be expected at any moment 
across the Po. They now awoke—they could not help 
waking—to the character of the war. Orders were sent 
to Sempronius to return at once from Sicily for the pro¬ 
tection of Italy. He obeyed with a heavy heart, and 
sending his troops some by land and some by sea, bade 
them rejoin him at Ariminum, an important town on the 
Adriatic, situated just where the great Flaminian road 
ends and the plain of the Po begins. 

But meanwhile Scipio and Hannibal had come into 
collision, and the first Roman blood in the great duel 
had been shed. From the valley of the 
Dora Baltea Hannibal had advanced to- of 

wards the Po; but by turning aside west¬ 
ward to chastise the Taurini, he had given Scipio time 
to cross that river near Placentia, and to throw a bridge 
over the Ticinus, a stream which, issuing from the Lake 
Verbanus (Maggiore), flows southwards into the Po near 
Pavia. Not far from this stream the armies, or rather a 
part of them, met in battle. Both generals had led out 
their cavalry in person to make a reconnaissance in force. 
Scipio, to compensate, as he hoped, for his inferiority in 
that arm, had also taken some light infantry with him ; 
but these proved one of the causes of his defeat. Fear¬ 
ing to be trampled under foot by the cavalry, they retired 
behind their supports. The Gallic horse, who formed 
his centre, gallantly withstood the charge of the bridled 
Spanish cavalry of Hannibal. But the bridleless Nu- 
midian cavalry, on which he most relied, and which he 
had placed upon his wings, outflanking the enemy, and 
riding round towards their rear, first fell on the retreating 
infantry, and dealt them the very death which they had 
tried to avoid ; then, charging in their peculiar fashion, 
sometimes in twos and threes, sometimes in a compact 


128 


Rome and Carthage. 


Hannibal’s 

advance. 


mass, they fell on the Roman centre. This decided the 
conflict. Scipio received a dangerous wound, and was 
( only, as it is said, rescued by his son, a youth of seven¬ 
teen, who risked his own to save his father’s life, and 
lived to conquer Hannibal at Zama, to finish the war, and 
, J-~to win the proud name of Africanus. 

The retreat of the Romans, though a hasty retreat, 
was not a rout; but it was ominous of what was to follow. 

It proved the superiority of the Numidian 
cavalry to any which the Romans could 
bring against them; and, seeing that the 
plains of Lombardy would always give them the advan¬ 
tage, Scipio determined to place the Po between himself 
and the enemy. He crossed in safety ; but a party of 
600 men, who were left behind to cover the retreat and to 
cut down the bridge, fell into Hannibal’s hands. Unable 
to cross the river there, Hannibal marched up its left 
bank till he found a convenient place. He there threw 
a bridge of boats across, and then marching down on the 
right side of the Po crossed, as it would seem, the Trebia, 
and pitched his camp six miles to the south of Placentia, 
under the strong walls of which Scipio’s army lay en¬ 
trenched. 

The whole country to the north of the Po, with the 
exception of the recently planted colony of Cremona, 
was now lost to the Romans. Already, be¬ 
fore the battle of the Ticinus, the Ligurians 
and the Gallic tribes along the upper Po 
had joined Hannibal; and now embassies 
flowed in from almost all the remaining tribes of 
Cisalpine Gaul, offering their alliance. Scipio was now 
alarmed for his safety; better, he thought, the exposed 
hill-sides than the fortified camp before Placentia, if only 
he could quit himself of these Gauls, so formidable as 
enemies, so doubly formidable as allies. Accordingly he 


Hannibal 
selects his 
ground for 
another 
battle. 


Selection of Battle field. 


129 

broke up his camp by night, put, as it would seem, the 
Trebia between himself and Hannibal, and, marching 
southward, took posession of some high ground formed 
by a spur of the Northern Apennines. It was a perilous 
operation, for his line of retreat took him near to Han¬ 
nibal, who discovered the movement before it was com¬ 
pleted ; and had not the Numidian horsemen sent in 
pursuit turned aside to plunder the deserted camp, it 
might have fared ill with the whole Roman army. But 
the hills to the west of the Trebia, on which Scipio’s 
camp now lay, protected him at all events from the 
dreaded cavalry, and he could afford to wait patiently 
for the arrival of Sempronius from Sicily. Why Han¬ 
nibal did not seize what seems to have been a golden 
opportunity, and, thrusting himself between the two 
armies, crush Sempronius as he crossed the level coun¬ 
try, so favourable for cavalry, between Ariminum and 
the Trebia, must remain a mystery. But the junction 
was effected without any opposition from him, and he 
now found himself confronted by two consular armies cf 
40,000 men. Scipio, impeded by his wound, and appre¬ 
hensive of the result, as one who had already felt the 
weight of Hannibal’s arm, was for delay. Sempronius, 
on the contrary, was eager to fight, for if Rome could 
nOtdre defended by two consular armies, it might well 
seem that she could not be defended at all. A petty 
success won by his cavalry over some squadrons of 
Numidian horse, who were harrying the country, made 
him doubly confident. Hannibal knew his man, and 
knew also that the consular elections at Rome were not 
far off. If a battle was not fought in the next few days, 
it would be fought not by Sempronius, but by his suc¬ 
cessor. Accordingly he laid all his plans for the battle 
which he knew he could at any moment force on. 


i 3 ° 


Rome and Carthage. 


In the plain of the Trebia, and on the eastern side of 
it where Hannibal still lay, was a water-course over¬ 
grown with bulrushes and brambles, and 
battie° f deep enough with its steep banks to hide 

even cavalry. It was the very place for an 
ambuscade, for no one would expect an ambush in a 
country which seemed to the ordinary glance so level 
and unbroken. Hannibal saw his chance, and here, 
during the night, he placed his brother Mago, with two 
thousand horse and foot whom he had picked out for the 
purpose. Mago was young and adventurous, and sprang 
at the task assigned him. At dawn of day Hannibal 
sent his Numidian horse across the river, with orders to 
ride up to the enemy’s camp and draw them out. 
Sempronius was ready to be caught; and the Numidian 
horse falling back, as they had been instructed, across 
the river, drew the Roman horse and foot, flushed with 
their apparent success, after them. 

It was mid-winter. Heavy rain had fallen on the 
previous night, and the swollen waters of the Trebia 
rose to the breasts of the soldiers as they 
theTrebia made their way across. When they reached 
the opposite bank they found themselves 
face to face with Hannibal’s army. Sleet was falling 
fast, and the wind blew icily cold over the plains which 
lay between the eternal snows of the Alps and those 
which had lately fallen on the Apennines. In the hurry 
of the call to arms the Romans had taken no breakfast; 
and now, faint with hunger and numbed with the cold, 
they stood on the river’s bank with the day’s work still 
all before them. Hannibal, on the contrary, had or¬ 
dered his men to take their breakfasts by their firesides, 
and then, buckling on their armour and saddling their 
horses, to remain in the shelter of their tents till the sig- 


Plan of Trelia. 


*^T 





































Rome and Carthage. 


nal should be given. Hastily throwing forward his 
light-armed troops and sharpshooters, to occupy the 
attention of the enemy, he now drew up his main line 
of battle immediately behind them ; his Gallic, Spanish, 
and African troops in the centie, and his cavalry and 
elephants on the wings. The light-armed troops, having 
played with the Romans for a time, fell back between the 
intervals of the maniples behind, and the 4,000 Roman 
cavalry, finding themselves suddenly exposed to the 
attacks of more than double their number, broke and 
fled, leaving the dreaded Numidians to attack the in¬ 
fantry on their now unprotected flanks. Many of the 
Roman infantry stood their ground nobly, and for a 
short time kept the conflict doubtful; but then Mago, 
starting up from his ambuscade, fell upon their rear. 
Surrounded as they were on every side, one body of 
10,000 men yet fought their way, with the courage of 
despair, through the Carthaginian ranks in front, and 
managed by a circuitous route to make their way to 
Placentia; but the rout of the remainder was complete. 
In vain they tried to reach the river which they had 
crossed so imprudently in the morning, for they were 
ridden down as they fled by the Numidian cavalry, who 
seemed to be everywhere amongst them, or were 
trampled to death by the elephants. A mere remnant 
escaped across the river, and were saved from further 
pursuit by the violence of the storm. 

Well might Hannibal rejoice at the victory which he 
had won. He had beaten two Roman armies ; the diffi¬ 
culties and the dangers and the disasters of 
his march from Spain had been crowned by 
a triumphant success; and it was doubtful 
whether any force remained to bar his march upon Rome. 
In vain did Sempronius try to disguise the magnitude of 


Results of 
battle. 


Passage of the Marshes. 


r 33 


the disaster which had overtaken him. He had fought a 
battle, so he sent word to Rome, and it was only the 
storm which had prevented him from winning a decisive 
victory. How came it then, people asked—and well they 
might ask—Lnat Hannibal was in possession of the field 
of battle, that the Gauls had joined him to a man, that 
the Roman camp had been broken up, and that the Ro¬ 
man armies—all that remained of them—were cowering 
in the fortified camp before Placentia or behind the walls 
of Cremona, while Hannibal’s cavalry were scouring the 
fair plains of Lombardy ? The truth was too clear ; but 
the spirit of the Roman Senate showed no signs of 
breaking. They prepared even now to take the offensive. 
Armaments were despatched to the remotest corners of 
their dominions,—to Tarentum, for instance, to Sicily and 
to Sardinia; a new navy was fitted out, the consular 
elections held, and four more legions levied ; “for,” says 
Polybius emphatically, “the Romans are never so terrible 
as when real terrors gird them in on every side.” 

At the first approach of spring Hannibal attempted 
to cross the Apennines ; but a storm more terrible even 
than those of the Alps drove him back to his 

i ri • Passage 

winter quarters. When the spring began in of the 

earnest, Hannibal made a second, and this A P>- nnines - 

time a successful, attempt to cross the mountains, which 
lay immediately to the south of his position. Two routes 
alone seem to have been deemed practicable by the 
newly elected consuls for his advance into Central Italy. 
The one was by the Central Apennines in the direction 
of Faesulte; the other along the coast of the Adriatic. 
Cn. Servilius lay at Ariminum, prepared to block the one 
against his passage ; Flaminius at Arretium, in the heart 
of Etruria, to block the other. But Hannibal did not 
confine himself to any authorized routes, nor did he car6 


*34 


Rome and Carthage. 


to strike only when he could do so by the recognized 
laws of war. His genius could dispense with both. Ac¬ 
cordingly he crossed the Apennines where they approach 
the western coast of Italy, near the head waters of the 
Marca, and reached, without serious difficulty, the plains 
of the Arno near Lucca. 

The region which lies between Lucca and Fsesulas is 
intersected by lakes, and the melting of the snow on the 
hills had then caused the Arno to overflow 
the^marshes. * ts ball ks, making the whole one vast morass. 

How would his army stand this renewal of 
horrors in the very land of promise ? Of the fidelity and 
courage of his Libyan and Spanish veterans Hannibal 
was well assured, but as regards the Gauls, his newly 
formed allies, it was far otherwise. He placed them, 
therefore, in the middle of his line of march, that they 
might be encouraged by the troops who led the van, or 
be driven back to their duty, if they tried to turn home¬ 
ward, by Mago and his cavalry who were to bring up the 
rear. For four days and three nights the army went 
toiling on through the water or the mud, unable to find a 
dry spot on which they could either sit down or sleep. 
The Gauls, driven forward by Mago’s cavalry overground 
which was all the more difficult to pass from the trampling 
it had already undergone, and unused to fatigue, stum¬ 
bled amidst the deep morasses, and fell to rise no more. 
Disease attacked the horses and carried away their hoofs. 
Hannibal himself, tortured with ophthalmia, rode on the 
one elephant which had survived the last year’s cam¬ 
paign, and escaped only with the loss of an eye. 

At last the invading army reached the 
Ftam?nius° f high ground of Faesulae, and there Hanni¬ 
bal learned, one would think with sur¬ 
prise, that the consuls were still at their respective sta- 


Hostility of Patricians to Flaminius. 

tions some fifty miles apart, and with the Apennines be¬ 
tween them. Servilius, it would seem, was still expecting 
the attack of Hannibal on his front at Ariminum when 
the Carthaginians had already crossed the mountains 
and had shown themselves in his rear at Faesulae. The 
other consul, Flaminius, was at Arretium, to the south 
of the central chain of the Apennines, and, lying as he 
did between Hannibal and the probable line of his ad¬ 
vance on Rome, was likely to bear the brunt of his as¬ 
sault. Flaminius was a marked man in more ways than 
one. Of a plebeian family, he had long since incurred 
the deadly hatred of the patricTansTby preferring the in¬ 
terests of the citizens at large to those of their order; a 
senator, he was hated by the Senate because he had 
supported a law which forbade senators to amass large 
sums by trading with merchant vessels. Sixteen years 
before, as tribune of the people, he had carried, in spite 
of the interested opposition of the aristocracy, a law for 
the 'division of the conquered Gallic territory in Umbria 
amongst the poorer citizens. Such a man the Senate 
might fear as well as hate, and envy as well as fear. 
But no efforts and no malice of theirs could blot out 
those splendid monuments of his recent censorship, the 
Circus and the great military road which, to this day, 
bear his name. And now, in the year 217—a year so 
big with the destinies of Rome—the popular favour se¬ 
cured for him, in spite of all the old opposition, a sec¬ 
ond consulship. If the wave of destruction which was 
breaking over Italy was to be driven back at all, his, 
the people were determined, should be the hand to 
do it. 

The winter at Rome had passed amidst £I < tridans°to 
gloom and doubt; the augurs and the priests Flaminlus - 
alone had a good time of it, and their hands were 




136 Rome and Carthage. 

full enough. The general anxiety gave birth to por¬ 
tents, and was, in its turn, increased by them. 
When Flaminius was elected consul, the omens in¬ 
creased in number and in horror. In the vegetable 
market an infant six months old shouted “ Triumph ! ” 
In the cattle market an ox rushed up the stairs of a 
house to the third story and threw itself out of the win¬ 
dow ; fiery ships were seen in the heavens ; and from 
all parts of Italy stories of terrible appearances came 
dropping in, which lost nothing as they passed from 
mouth to mouth. Once previously the Senate had at¬ 
tempted to annul the appointment of their enemy to the 
mastership of the horse, because a mouse had been 
heard to squeak during the election ; and now, when the 
very atmosphere seemed charged with portents, when 
showers of stones were falling, bucklers gleaming in 
the heavens, the statues of the god of war perspiring, 
and strange and unheard of creatures coming to the birth, 
it needed no prophetic insight to foresee that the proper 
obstacle would be forthcoming on the day of Flaminius’ 
entry on his office, and that if religious awe could avail 
aught, the consul-elect would never become consul in 
reality. Impatient of such chicaneries, Flaminius took 
the law into his own hands, and, making light of the 
sacred rites which he would have to perform on his entry 
into office, went off to the camp at Ariminum before the 
Ides of March came. Legates were sent to recall him, 
but he heeded them not. Evil omens, so the Senate 
said, pursued him even now. When he offered his first 
sacrifice as consul the victim escaped from the altar and 
sprinkled the bystanders with its blood. When he had 
fallen back to Arretium, and the time came for him to 
break up his camp there, and to follow Hannibal on his 
march to Rome, as he was in duty bound to do, even 


Hannibal's March through Etruria . 


then the malice of the Senate, or the folly of theVannal- 
ists, represents the gods as still taking part against him. 
It was clear that the man whom the gods intended to 
destroy they first drove mad. Flaminius ordered the 
standard-bearer to advance ; but the standard, it was 
said, stuck fast in the ground. He mounted his horse, 
and it straightway threw him. The annalists forgot, or 
they did not know, that the greater the terrors which the 
science of the augurs put in his way, the greater was the 
credit due to him for despising them when duty called. 
It is difficult to say how far this army of angry portents 
may have paralyzed the Roman legionaries when they 
found themselves surrounded in the defiles of Lake 
Trasimene. It is not difficult to see that, if it did so, it 
was the aristocracy, and not the legionaries, who were to 
blame ; for it was the aristocracy who, for their own 
selfish ends, had long been working on popular super¬ 
stition to crush the true friend of the people. 

Hannibal had advanced from Faesulae, laying waste 
with fire and sword the rich plains of Etruria. The 
plunder, and the slaughter, and the smoke „ 
of burning homesteads, with which he at- march through 
tempted to draw the consul from the shelter Etruna ' 
of his camp to risk a battle, might have roused a man 
who was less hot-headed than his enemies represent 
Flaminius to have been. But it was not till Hannibal 
had marched leisurely by his camp, and went devastating 
on towards Rome, that Flaminius left his position and 
followed him. It was not, as Polybius imagined, morti¬ 
fied pride at the fancied slight which Hannibal had 
shown him ; still less was it, as the annalists tell us, 
and as the circle of the Scipios perhaps believed, the 
s elfish desire to win the credit of a victory, before his 
colleague could come up, which made Flaminius follow 


Rome and Carthage. 


138 

so closely on Hannibal’s steps. Hannibal knew better 
than the detractors of Flaminius what Flaminius was 
bound to do. He knew that he could do nothing else 
but follow him closely, and he laid his plans and chose 
his ground with his own consummate skill. He had vio¬ 
lated all the rules of war by leaving a hostile force of 
60,000 men in his rear and upon his line of communica¬ 
tions. It remained for him now to justify his temerity 
by success, and the greatest sticklers for the rules of war 
will admit that he did it with a vengeance. 

Hannibal had reached the shores of Lake Trasimene. 
Near its northern margin ran the high road from Cortona 
to Perugia, and above the road rose a line of 
Lake Trasi- undulating hills which at two points, the one 
near the tower now called Borghetto, and 
the other near the small town of Passignano, approach 
the lake so closely as to cut off what lies between them 
from the outer world. Between these two points the hills 
retreat from the lake in tire form of a semicircle, leaving 
between themselves and it a plain which seems broad by 
contrast to its narrow entrance and outlet. Along these 
retreating hills Hannibal placed the main part of his 
army, and the plain which they enfold was the scene of 
the terrible catastrophe which followed. On the spur 
near Passignano and the hills behind it he stationed, in a 
conspicuous position, his Gallic cavalry and his veteran 
Libyans and Spaniards. Near Borghetto, and on either 
side of the road which descends into the plain, but care¬ 
fully concealed from those who might pass along it by 
some broken ground, were his Gallic infantry and his 
fumidian cavalry. On the hills to the north of the plain, 
or rather behind their crests, were placed the light-armed 
troops and the Balearic slingers. Flaminius reached the 
hills which shut in the lake late in the evening, too late, 


Battle of Trnsimene. 



130 


ROMAN 

CAMP 


I I Carthaginians. 

A JXumidian Cavalry and 
Gall ic Inf an try . 

B Light Troops andJBalearcs. 
C Spanish and Libyan 
Infantry (Hannibal). 




SP 




' BATTLE v 

OF 

LAKE TB.ASIMENE 

X B.C.217. ^ 


















140 


Rome and Carthage. 


it would seem, to attempt to pass them then ; but next 
morning, before it was broad daylight, and without 
sending scouts forward to see that the further end of the 
pass was clear, he continued the pursuit. 

It was a fatal mistake. In heavy marching order, and 
without a thought of danger, the Roman army entered 

the valley of death and moved along the 
Battle of Lake roa( j that skirted the margin of the lake. 

i rasimene. ° 

A thick curtain of mist hung over the low¬ 
lands which the army was crossing, and hid from view 
the base of the adjoining hills, while their tops were 
catching the first rays of the rising sun. With grim de¬ 
light, and in a fever of expectation, must the soldiers of 
Hannibal, as they saw above the mist the whole crest of 
the hills and each glen and hollow which lay between 
their folds crowded with their brothers in arms, have 
listened to the tramp of the 30,000 men whom they 
could hear but could not see, as they passed along a 
few hundred yards below, each step making the destruc¬ 
tion of the whole more sure. As soon as the rear of the 
Roman army had got well within the passage, Hannibal 
gave the signal. The Gauls and the Numidian cavalry 
hastened down and closed up the entrance, while the 
passage out was already blocked by the Gallic cavalry 
and the veterans. And now from all sides, from above 
and from below, from the front and from the rear, the 
battle-cry arose, and the enemy were upon the Romans. 
It was a carnage, and a carnage only. There was no 
time or space to form in order of battle ; orders could 
neither be given nor heard ; the men had hardly time 
to adjust their armour or to draw their swords. The 
majority stood where they were, and were cut down. 
Six thousand who led the van fought their way, sword 
in hand, in a compact mass, through the troops that 




Battle of Trasimene. 



blocked the outlet, and reached a hillock, where they 
halted. The mist still hung heavy on the ground be¬ 
low, and half ignorant of what was going on behind 
them, they waited in dread suspense, unable to help 
their comrades, yet unable also to tear themselves away 
from the scene of the conflict. It was their turn now to 
hear and not to see. At last, as the sun rose higher in 
the heavens, the mist lifted and revealed the extent of 
the butchery below. For three hours the slaughter had 
gone on, and 15,000 Roman corpses covered the ground, 
or were floating on the waters. Some in their terror had 
tried to swim across the lake, but were drowned by their 
heavy armour ; others who had waded into the water 
might be seen standing in it up to their necks, and beg¬ 
ging for their lives, till the cavalry rode in and struck 
off their heads. Of the conquering army barely 1,500 
had fallen, and these were chiefly Gauls, the troops 
whom Hannibal could best afford to lose. 

The Roman army was annihilated. To make the 
disaster more complete, the six thousand infantry who 
had so gallantly fought their way out of the 
pass were overtaken on the following day FlamtaSus 
by Maherbal and forced to surrender ; while 
four thousand cavalry, who had been sent forward by 
Servilius as his forerunners to co-operate with Flaminius, 
fell also into Hannibal’s hands. Flaminius himself, 
after in vain trying to play the general’s part amidst the 
blind panic and confusion, had died a soldier’s death, 
fighting bravely. A Gallic Insubrian recognizing him, 
cried aloud, “ Yonder is the consul who has slain our 
legions and ravaged our territory,” and rushing at him, 
ran him through with his spear. In vain did Hannibal 
search for his body to give him the honourable funeral 
which he never refused to a worthy foe. Flaminius 


Rome and Carthage. 

may not have been a great general, he may have been 
impetuous and headstrong, and he certainly made one 
fatal mistake ; but amidst the calumnies heaped on him 
by the Senate, and the gloom which always gathers 
round defeat, we can safely say that he was the worthiest 
and least self-seeking Roman of his time. 



CHAPTER XI. 

HANNIBAL OVERRUNS CENTRAL ITALY. 

(b.c. 217-216.) 

At Rome no effort was made to disguise the extent of 
the calamity which had overtaken the State. The at¬ 
tempt had been made after the Trebia, and 
Trasimene had not succeeded then ; still less could it 
reaches Rome. succee( j now . The only man who might 
have had anything to gain by hiding the naked truth 
lay unrecognized amidst the heaps of slain in the fatal 
valley. It was the interest of the survivors to blacken 
his memory, not to strew flowers upon his grave; and 
they succeeded in the attempt. Roman senators even 
then consoled themselves for the defeat by the reflec¬ 
tion that it was the presumptuous folly of their private 
foe which was responsible for it; and Roman orators 
and historians, for centuries afterwards, pointed their 
morals or adorned their tales by a reference to the well- 
deserved fate of the man who had withstood the patri¬ 
cian order and had despised the gods. When the first 
vague rumour of the disaster reached the city, an 
anxious crowd gathered in the Forum. Towards sunset 
the praetor mounted the rostrum, and simplv said, “We 
have been defeated in a great battle.” The scene of 



Fabius made Dictator. 


Ob 

consternation which ensued brought home to the few 
survivors who had managed to reach the city, more viv¬ 
idly than the scene of slaughter itself, the full reality of 
what had happened. The Senate alone preserved its 
dignity and its self-restraint. Thinking not of the past, 
but of the present and the immediate future, they sat, 
day after day, from sunrise to sunset, concerting 
measures for the defence of the city. To remedy the 
evils of a divided command, they determined to revive 
tiie office oT Dictator, an office unused for thirty-nine 
years past, and therefore nearly unknown to that genera¬ 
tion. Their choice fell on the most prudent and re¬ 
spected, if not the ablest, of the patricians, Quintus 
Fabius Maximus, Marcus Minucius being selected as 
his master~of~the horse. The Dictator first made his 
peace by vows and offerings with the angry gods, and 
then took more practical steps for the defence. By his 
order the walls were repaired and manned, the bridges 
over the rivers were broken down, the country through 
which Hannibal’s advance was likely to take place was 
turned into a desert, and everything prepared to with¬ 
stand an immediate attack. 

Why did not Hannibal at once advance on Rome, as 
the most cool-headed of his opponents expected that he 
would ? The answer is the same that must 
be given on a yet more critical occasion in victory sent 
the following year. He knew, what the to Carthage. 
Romans themselves hardly yet fully knew, that every 
Roman citizen could, when occasion required, become 
a soldier; he knew also that amid a hostile population— 
for no Italian town had as yet come over to him—his 
attack, however impetuous, must break upon the walls of 
the cTFyT" TTIre’'delayed a little longer, and allowed his 
victories to produce their natural result, he would be borne 


i 44 Rome and Carthage. 

back, he hoped, upon a wave of Italian national enthu¬ 
siasm, and, bearing the banner of Italian independence 
would strike down at his leisure the common oppressor. 
Accordingly, when the cup which he had so eager!) de¬ 
sired to drain seemed to be at his lips, he wisely dashed 
it from them. Crossing the Tiber, with stern resolve he 
crossed also the Flaminian Road, which must have 
seemed to his victorious army as if it were there for the 
express purpose of inviting an immediate march on the 
capital; and, hazarding an attack upon the adjoining 
Latin colony of Spoletium, he proved to demonstration 
the soundness of the judgment he had formed as to the 
courage of the Italians behind stone walls, and the im¬ 
possibility, with so small a force as his own, of coping 
adequately with it. After traversing Umbria, he crossed 
the Apennines a second time, and at last laden with the 
plunder of Central Italy, he entered the territory of Pice- 
num. Here the Carthaginians caught sight, for the first 
time since many months, of their native element, the 
sea; and Hannibal dispatched his first messenger with 
tidings of what he had done, to the Carthaginian Senate. 
Never probably, before or since, did a general send des¬ 
patches to his government weighted with such brilliant 
achievements. From New Carthage to the Adriatic, 
what a catalogue of dangers met and overcome, and 
what crowning victories ! The Ebro, the Rhone, and 
the Po; the Pyrenees, the Alps, and the Apennines; 
the Ticinus, the Trebia, and the" Trasimene ! Well can 
we believe, what we are expressly told, that such news dis¬ 
armed all opposition to the lion’s brood at Carthage, and 
closed the mouths of even the peace party. In the enthu¬ 
siasm of the moment all parties determined to send rein 
forcements (why had they not taken steps to do so before ?) 
alike to Hasdrubalin Spain and to Hannibal in Italy, 


Policy of Fabius. 



Meanwhile the Phoenician hero rested his troops, 
fatigued with all that they had undergone, in the plains 
of Picenum. They lived on the fat of the 
land, and the Numidian horses, diseased as Hannibal in 

ricenum. 

they were from their bad or their scanty 
food, soon recovered their condition when they were 
groomed day by day with the old wine of Italian vin¬ 
tages. Here, too, Hannibal took the opportunity—a 
hazardous one even for him in the midst of a campaign 
—of arming his Libyan and, perhaps, some of his 
Spanish troops in the Roman fashion. The victor of the 
Trasimene could be in no want of Roman suits of 
armour. When the troops had been sufficiently re¬ 
cruited, and were again eager to advance, he marched 
at his leisure through the territories of the Marrucini 
and Frentani, the Marsi and Peligni, ravaging them as he 
went, and at length pitched his tent near Argyrippa, or 
Arpi, in Apulia. 

Fabius, on his part, after levying four new legions led 
them off in pursuit of Hannibal. He came up with him 
at Arpi, and Hannibal immediately offered 
the battle which it might be presumed that Fabms 0< 
a pursuing army, under a successor of Fla- 
minius, would at once accept. But Fabius had made up /, 
his mind to a policy ; a policy inevitable if Rome was to h 
be saved, but requiring no ordinary firmness and cour- j/ 
age to carry out. The policy was to commit nothing tor^ 
fortune, to follow Hannibal wherever he went, dogging 
his footsteps constantly, but never risking a battle, and 11 
never, so far as human foresight could prevent it, giving \ 
the enemy a chance of taking him at a disadvantage. \ 
In vain did Hannibal order the richest country to be i 
devastated before the Dictator’s eyes ; in vain did he * 
shift his camp from place to place, in hopes that his 


146 


Rome and Carthage. 


rapidity might wrest from the old man what insults and 
annoyances could not. Never close to Hannibal, but 
never far behind him, with admirable resolution, and 
with still more admirable self-restraint, did Fabius follow 
his foe from place to place, always clinging to the hills 
occasionally cutting off stragglers, or intercepting the 
booty which the flying Numidian squadrons had cap¬ 
tured, but giving no chance of a general engagement. 

It was not in flesh and blood—certainly not in the 
flesh and blood of the hot-headed master of the horse— 



to submit patiently to this for ever. The 
name of “ Lingerer ” (Cunctator)—given to 


Hannibal’s 
march into 
Campania. 


1 Fabius, at first as a mark of approval by 


those who blamed Flaminius for his rashness—became 
for the time a term of bitterest reproach. The lingerer 
was called a do-nothing, and his caution was put down 
to cowardice or even to treachery. “ Hannibal’s 
lackey,” so the soldiers, aptly enough from their point 
of view, nick-named their general, would go anywhere 
if his master gave him the lead ; without it he would go 
nowhere. But the old Dictator was as proof against the 
murmurings of his soldiers and mutinous speeches of 
his own master of the horse, Minucius, as he was against 
all the devices of Hannibal. At last, wearied out b\ 
his delay, Hannibal determined that Fabius, if he would 
not tire himself out by hard fighting, should at least do 
so by hard marching; and leaving Apulia behind, where 
he had already taken the strongly fortified town of 
Venusia, he marched into Samnium, the most inaccessible 
and mountainous part of Italy, ravaged the territory of Be- 
neventum, in its very centre, took Telesia by assault, and 
then passed straight on out of Samnium into Campania. 

The plains of Campania were certainly the most fer¬ 
tile and beautiful plains in ancient Italy; the Italians 


Hannibal in Campania. 


147 


thought them the most beautiful and fertile in the world. 
“Campaniathe blessed, where all human delights meet 
and vie with each other,” says Pliny of it. One of two 
things was evident. In defence of all this 
wealth and beauty, either Fabius must at inaction of 

length risk a battle, or it would be clear to Fablus - 

all Italians that the whole of Italy was at Hannibal’s 
mercy, and its towns would, if from the instinct of self- 
preservation alone, at length join the conquering side. 
Fabius had followed Hannibal more quickly than was 
his wont, and his troops were in high spirits, for they 
hought that their general was at length in earnest, and 
would strike a blow rather than leave Campania to fall 
into the enemy’s hands. But they were disappointed. 
They reached the ridge of the Calliculan hill which 
overlooked the plain, and then they sat down to enjoy, or 
to endure, as best they could, the now well-known sight 
of devastated fields and burning homesteads. Their dis¬ 
content broke out with two-fold force, and it was evident 
from the reception which they gave to a mutinous speech 
of Minucius, that the soldiers thought the master of the 
horse would make a better commander than the Dictator; 
an opinion in which it was also evident that the master 
of the horse himself fully coincided. Aware that the dis¬ 
content of the army had spread to Rome, and even to the 
aristocracy whose representative he was, Fabius yet held 
on steadfastly to his purpose. He knew that Northern 
Campania, with all its riches, could not support the Car¬ 
thaginian army through the winter, and that Hannibal 
must attempt to retreat by the pass through which he had 
advanced. He therefore flattered himself that he had 
caught his enemy as in a trap, and placing 4,000 men at 
the head of the pass by which Hannibal must needs retreat, 
drew up his main army on the hills near its entrance. 



148 


Rome and Carthage. 


Laden with booty, the spoils of Campania, Hannibal 
halted just below him, while Fabius made all his dispo¬ 
sitions to repel the attempt to force a passage which 
would, doubtless, be made on the following day. But 
Hannibal had no intention of fighting at a 
to a entrap ils disadvantage, or indeed of forcing the pass 
Hannibal. at a p He intended to march quietly through 
it. Accordingly, he selected from the vast herds of oxen 
which he was driving towards his winter quarters, two 
thousand of the strongest, and bidding his sutlers cut as 
many faggots of dry brushwood, and fasten them to 
their horns, he ordered that when the night was well 
advanced, the faggots should be kindled, and the oxen, 
with their horns ablaze, be driven up the hills which 
hung over the pass. Maddened with fear and pain, the 
affrighted beasts ran wildly up the steep sides of the 
valley, and Fabius himself, as well as the 4,000 men 
upon the col, imagined that Hannibal was escaping that 
way over the hills. But, true to his character, the Dic¬ 
tator would not venture out of his camp till he could see 
clearly what lay before him; and meantime Hannibal 
led his army, which had been refreshed by half a night’s 
sleep, quietly up the unguarded pass, and reached Allifae 
in safety. Fabius found himself outwitted, and it was 
natural in the keenness of their vexation, that his men 
should accuse him of having purposely allowed Hanni¬ 
bal to escape; an accusation which shortly afterwards 
seemed triumphantly brought home to him, when the 
crafty Phoenician took occasion to spare his private pro¬ 
perty, while he wasted all around with fire and sword. 

Still Fabius clung steadfastly to his purpose. He fol¬ 
lowed Hannibal northwards to the Peligni. and when 
his enemy turned southwards again, towards his pro¬ 
posed winter quarters in Apulia, and he himself was 


Minucius co-Dictator. 


149 


called off to Rome to perform some sacrifices incident 
to his office, he straitly charged Minucius 
to follow his policy, and on no account to Minucius. 
risk a battle in his absence. 

Hannibal had long since formed his estimate of 
Minucius, and when he threw forward a portion of his 
forces to a hill still nearer to the enemy, a sharp skirmish 
took place, which ended in the Romans occupying the 
disputed position. Encouraged by this first success, 
Minucius made a descent in force upon Hannibal’s 
foragers, and cut many of them to pieces. Hannibal 
found himself for the first time in his life in the midst of 
the enemy, yet unable to take the field. He was, so at 
least his enemies thought, penned within his own camp, 
and on the morrow he made a hasty retreat to his old 
position at Geronium, fearing lest Minucius, whose 
qualities he had apparently underrated, should take it 
by a coup de main, and thus the provisions he had so 
laboriously got together should fall into the enemy’s 
hands. 

It is not to be wondered at, that when the news of this 
success reached Rome the delight was great, and out 
of all proportion to its immediate cause. 

It was the first success which the Roman 
arms had won in the war, and it seemed to 
indicate that the tide had at length begun to turn. The 
fame o f Minucius was in e very body’s mouth, and as he 
rose in popular estimation, so did the Dictator fall. One 
s'troke of good luck had turned the heads of the Romans 
more completely than had all their previous misfortunes, 
and they took one of the most incredibly foolish steps 
recorded in their history They did not try to depose | 
Fatmis from the command for which they deemed him 
unfitted, but they raised Minucius to an equal command 


Minucius 

co-Dictator. 





15 ° Rome and Carthage. 

with him. For the first time in Roman history were to 
be seen two co-Dictators, differing alike in temperament 
and in policy, and the one raised to an equality with the 
other simply because of the difference ! It has been said 
by a high military authority that one bad general is 
better than two good ones ; and it was apparent to those 
who had eyes to see that the sword of Hannibal would 
soon arbitrate between such conflicting claims. 

Fabius returned to the army as convinced as ever of 
the soundness of his policy, and prepared to press upon 
his colleague by his personal influence what 
S r Fabius V1CeS cou ^ n0 longer enforce upon him by supe¬ 
rior power. Seeing that Minucius was bent 
on fighting, he proposed either that they should take the 
command of the whole army on alternate days, or that 
each should have the continuous and unfettered control 
over his own half of it. Minucius, possibly with a slight 
distrust of himself, under the new responsibilities of 
command, chose the latter alternative, and Fabius, 
doubtless thinking it better to risk the safety of two than 
of four legions on a single cast, was of the same mind. 
Hannibal, duly informed by his prisoners or his spies of 
the arrangement which had been made, directed his 
attention exclusively to Minucius. Near the camp of 
the new dictator was a hill with ground below it which 
presented the appearance of a general level, bare of 
trees ; but in it, as in the level ground near the Trebia, 
Hannibal’s experienced eye had discovered hollows and 
equalities which might hide a considerable force. Here 
by night he concealed some 5,000 foot and 500 horse, and 
at dawn of day he sent a small body of active troops to 
seize the hill in full view of the Romans. Minucius took 
the bait. In the engagement which ensued the ambus¬ 
cade did its duty well; and it would have fared ill with 


Services of Fabitis. 


the army of the new dictator, had not Fabius, observing 
from his own camp, at a distance of a mile, what was 
going on, come up at the right moment and prevented 
its retreat from being turned into a total rout. Minucius, 
it is said, frankly acknowledged his error, joined his 
camp to that of the old Dictator, and descended grace¬ 
fully once more into his proper post of master of the 
horse. 

The tables were now completely turned. Fabius was 
the hero alike of the camp and of the city. But his six 
months of office were drawing to a close, and it remain¬ 
ed to be seen whether his mantle would descend on 
those who were to succeed him. He had done great 
things in those six months. If he had not, as his ad¬ 
mirers said, altogether saved Rome by his delay, he had 
at least given her a brief breathing space. He had 
trained raw levies to look the warriors of Hannibal in 
the face—a feat to which they were quite unequal on the 
morrow of the Trasimene; and by allowing Hannibal 
to devastate at his pleasure the Apulian and Campanian 
plains, he had unintentionally elicited the most conclu¬ 
sive proof of the hopelessness of Hannibal’s enterprise. 
For even now no Italian city had revolted ; the serried 
ranks of the Italian Confederation remained unbroken, 
and it was clear to the keen-sighted Phoenician that he 
was still as far as ever from the goal of his hopes. The 
services, therefore, rendered by the Cunctator to Rome 
were very real services, even if they were not quite what 
his admirers represented them. To have escaped from 
Hannibal without a crushing defeat was in those times, 
as Livy truly remarks, a victory in itself. 





J S2 


Ro?ne ami Carthage. 


CHAPTER XII. 

BATTLE OF CANNAE. CHARACTER OF HANNIBAL. 

(b.c. 216.) 

The Roman Senate, during the winter which followed, 
gave new and striking proofs of their confidence in their 
own future by sending legates to expostulate with the 
Ligurians for having taken the part of Hannibal, and 
to watch the ever-fickle Gauls. Nor was 

Great exer- . 

tions of their horizon bounded by the limits of Italy. 

With the truest wisdom they despatched re¬ 
inforcements to their army in Spain ; they demanded the 
arrears of tribute from Illyria, and they sent even to 
Philip, King of Macedon, ordering him to surrender the 
intriguer Demetrius of Pharos, who had taken refuge in 
his court. But party spirit still ran high in the city. In 
the election for the consulship which had just taken 
place, other qualifications had been thought of than 
those which were essential in this supreme hour ; per¬ 
haps for the simple reason that the Romans did not yet 
realize that it might be supreme. L. Almilius Paullus, 
who had distinguished himself in the Illyrian war, was 
the successful candidate on the patrican side, but he re¬ 
ceived as his colleague P. Terentius Varra, the cham¬ 
pion of the Plebeians, a man who, if the patrician annal¬ 
ists can be believed, was not only of humble origin, the 
son of a butcher, but had himself worked in his father’s 
business, and was recommended to the suffrages of 
the people by nothing but a bullying manner and 
a vulgar impudence. Varro does not seem, it is 
true, to have been more of a military genius than 
Flaminius, or Sempronius, or Fabius; but that most of 



Rival Armies at Cannes. 


x 53 


the accusations laid to his charge are unjust is proved by 
the fact that he had held high offices before, that he was 
elected now in what no one could refuse to recognize as 
a time of danger, and that he was employed in the pub¬ 
lic service even after the disastrous name of Cannae had 
been indissolubly connected with his own. 

The spring found the hostile armies still facing each 
other near Geronium ; but Hannibal’s provisions were 
nearly exhausted. Not enough for ten days 
remained, and the wasted country could faceeachother 
yield no more. He began to look out for at Cannae - 
another Roman magazine which he might convert to his 
own use ; nor had he far to go. The Roman supplies 
and munitions of war for Apulia were collected in large 
quantities at Cannte, a town to the south of the Aufidus, 
about half way between Canusium and the sea. With 
strange short-sightedness the Roman generals of the 
preceding year had neglected to garrison it strongly ; 
and while the consuls of the new year were levying 
fresh legions at Rome, Hannibal, by one of his rapid 
marches, seized and appropriated it to his own use, as 
he had seized and appropriated Geronium before it. 
When at length vEmilius and Varro assumed the com¬ 
mand of the army, they did so under definite instruc¬ 
tions from the authorities at home to force on a battle. 
The Fabian method, they thought, had been tried long 
enough : it had done all that it could do ; and it was ap¬ 
parent that the Italian allies could not stand much 
longer the strain to which it had exposed them. Every 
pr ecau tion was taken, so far as numbers went, to ensure 
a victory. A Roman army ordinarily consisted of but 
two legions, each containing 4,200 infantry and 200 cav¬ 
alry. The army which was now raised consisted, not of 
two, but of eight legions, and each legion contained 5,000 


154 


Rome and Carthage. 


infantry and 300 cavalry. The Romans, therefore, could 
hardly now be accused of under-estimating, so far as 
mere numbers went, the gravity of the occasion. The 
consuls were to act together, and those of the previous 
year were retained as proconsuls to assist in handling 
the vast host. Never before had the Romans sent so 
large an army, at one time and place, into the field, and 
the contingent furnished by the allies was, according to 
precedent, equal to that of the Romans. The grand 
total, therefore, of the force on which the safety of Rome 
might seem to depend consisted of over 80,000 men. 
They found Hannibal encamped near Cannae, on the 
south side of the Aufidus, and they selected a spot for 
their own camp on~ the same side of the river, but six 
miles higher up its course. 

The surrounding country was level and suitable to 
the evolutions of cavalry, and without doubt had for 
this reason been selected by Hannibal. 
Paullus, seeing this, is said to have been 
anxious to postpone the battle till he should 
have drawn Hannibal into ground of his own choosing. 
The historians who have bepraised Paullus for this forgot, 
in their eagerness to throw all the blame for what hap¬ 
pened afterwards on the butcher’s son, that the orders 
of the authorities to fight a battle at once were stringent, 
and that it was not likely that Hannibal would, by any 
artifices of the Roman consuls, be drawn off from a po¬ 
sition selected by himself, well fortified and well sup¬ 
plied. It was impossible for an army of 80,000 men to 
linger long in so exhausted a country without striking a 
blow ; and to linger there, or to retreat without fighting, 
would have been alike fatal to the Roman cause in 
Apulia. The evils of a divided command were great 
enough, but they were not created by Varro. They 


Paullus and 
Varro. 


Anxiety at Rome. 


I S 5 


were even diminished, to a certain extent, in this case 
by the arrangement that the consuls should take the su¬ 
preme command on alternate days; and when Varro, 
on his day, pushed his camp nearer to the foe he was 
encouraged in his resolve to force on a battle by a suc¬ 
cess which he won over some skirmishers and light cav¬ 
alry who had been sent to bar his progress. Minucius 
had met with a like first success near Geronium, and 
Sempronius had done the same at the Trebia. Was it 
not possible that like effects might be produced by like 
causes, and that a deep-laid design of Hannibal might 
have had more to do with each than the prowess of the 
Romans ? But this did not strike—so remarked the 
Patrician annalists, wise after the event—the mind of 
Varro. The next day belonged to Paullus, and he sig¬ 
nalized his command by throwing a third of his army 
to the north side of the Aufidus, and by forming a sec¬ 
ond camp there, some miles nearer to the Carthaginians. 
By this step he hoped at once to protect his own foraging 
parties and to annoy those of the enemy. Eager for the 
conflict, Hannibal, two days after, drew out his forces in 
battle array on the south side of the river. The offer 
was declined by the prudent Paullus; and Hannibal, to 
bring matters to a crisis, sent his Numidians across the 
river with orders to cut off the Romans, who were en¬ 
camped on its northern side, from all access to it. It 
was the middle of June ; the country was parched and 
thirsty, and a dry wind, the Vulturnus, which blows at 
that time of year, raising clouds of dust, would make a 
scanty supply of water an intolerable hardship. Even 
if he had been disposed to postpone fighting, Varro 
could hardly now have done so. 

The delay of the last few days seemed irksome enough 
to the rural armies; but what must it have seemed to 


156 


Rome and Carthage. 


the citizens at home ? News had reached the city that 
the armies were facing each other, and that everything 
was prepared for a decisive conflict. They had ventured 
their all, or nearly their all, on this one throw. The 
stake was laid down, and the throw must be made, but it 
was hard to have so much time to ask themselves what 
if they should lose ? Omens and portents seemed to fill 
the air, as before the Trasimene Lake, and busy-tongued 
rumour passed from mouth to mouth, sending the citizens 
in crowds to the temples to seek from the gods by sup¬ 
plications what they could no longer gain or lose by any 
exertions of their own. It was the resource of the 
destitute, and they knew it, but it helped them to kill 
the period of suspense. 

Once more it was Varro’s turn for the command, and 
as the sun rose he began to transfer his army to the 
northern side of the river, and, after joining the contin¬ 
gent in the smaller camp there, drew the 
battle ° f whole out in battle array, facing the south. 

Nearly opposite Cannae the Aufidus, whose 
general course is north-east, takes a sharp bend to the 
south. Afterwards for some distance it runs east, and 
then, once more turning northward, reaches the line of 
its former course. The loop or link thus formed Hanni¬ 
bal marked out as the grave of the Roman army, the 
grave of 50,000 men ; and into it, as a preparatory step, 
he now threw his own small force, while Varro was 
crossing the stream higher up. His infantry did not 
number half that of the Romans ; but they were many of 
them veterans, and all of them men on whom he knew 
by experience that he could rely. His cavalry were only 
slightly superior in numbers to the enemy, but how 
vastly superior in every military quality the result was 
to prove. In the centre of his line of battle were 


Battle of Cannes- 


J 59 


Spaniards, whom Hannibal had pushed forward in his 
centre, had been gradually forced back, or rather had 
fallen back in accordance with his plan, first to a level 
with, and then right past, the heavy Africans on their 



flanks. The convex line of battle had thus become con¬ 
cave, and it seemed that the whole would be driven 
headlong into the river by the overwhelming masses of 
tlie Romans, who, as they yielded, kept pressing on, or 
were themselves pressed on by those behind and at their 
flanks, into every inch of ground left vacant for them. 
















i6o 


Rome and Carthage. 


But just at the critical moment Hasdrubal fell upon their 
rear, and the heavy Libyan infantry, who had hardly 
yet taken part in the battle, wheeling inward at the same 
time from right and left, attacked them on both flanks. 
Denser and denser grew the mass of terrified Romans, 
pressed on all four sides at once. Huddled together 
without room to draw, much less to wield, their swords, 
they stood or struggled in helpless imbecility, seeing 
their comrades on the circumference of the fatal circle 
cut down, one after the other, and doomed to wait in 
patience till their own turn should come. The question 
was no longer whether, but simply when, the stroke 
would fall on each. Few Romans indeed within that 
fatal ring were destined to escape. As at the Trasimene, 
it was a simple butchery; but it was a butchery which 
required treble the number of victims. The Romans 
were never cowards ; but those who stood near the cen¬ 
tre of that seething mass must needs have died, like 
cowards, many times before their death. “ The thicker 
the hay,” said Alaric long afterwards, in an outburst of 
brutality, “the easier it is mown.” But not even Alaric’s 
imagination could have pictured such a harvest of death 
as this of Cannae, and even the muscles of his brawny 
Visigoths would have been wearied out before they had 
slain, as the Carthaginians did on this fatal day, a num¬ 
ber of the enemy which, man for man, vastly exceeded 
their own. 

For eight hours the work of destruction went on, 
and at the end 50,000 men lay dead upon the ground. 

AEmilius Paullus, the Illyrian hero, who, 
battie tS ° f though wounded by a sling early in the day, 
had clung to his horse, heartening on his 
men, till he dropped exhausted from His saddle ; the pro- 
consul Servilius; the late high-spirited master of the 


Results of the Battle. 


161 


horse Minucius ; both quaestors, twenty-one military tri¬ 
bunes, sixty senators, and an unknown number of 
knights were among the slain. Nearly 20,000 Roman 
prisoners were taken, whether on the field itself in the 
pursuit, or in the two camps which were among the 
prizes of Hannibal's gigantic victory. Of the rest Varro, 
with a few horsemen only, had the good or ill fortune to 
escape to Venusia; and it was with difficulty that after 
some days he managed to rally a few thousand stragglers 
or malingerers at Canusium—all that now remained of 
the Roman army. Amidst all this slaughter, the con¬ 
queror had lost only 5,500 of his infantry, and but 200 of 
that matchless cavalry to whom the victory was mainly 
due. “ Send me on with the cavalry,” said Maherbal to 
Hannibal, in the exultation of the moment, ‘‘do thou 
follow behind, and in five days thou shalt sup in the 
Capitol.” He might well think so at the time, for the 
worst fears of the Romans, the highest hopes of Hanni¬ 
bal, had been more than realized ; the double stake had 
been played and had been lost, lost, it would seem then, 
irretrievably. So many knights lay dead that, as the 
story goes, Mago, when sent some time afterwards by 
Hannibal to Carthage with the tidings of his victory, 
emptied on the floor of the Senate House three bushels 
of golden rings taken from Equestrian fingers. It was 
a trophy of victory which the Carthaginian aristocracy 
—who, as has been already pointed out, commemorated 
the number of their campaigns by that of their rings, 
and who had, many of them, joined the opposition to 
the noble Barcine gens —could not fail to appreciate. 

The news, which was necessarily slow in reaching 
Carthage, reached Rome apace. It was, as the saying 
is, “ in the air ” even before the first courier with his dis¬ 
astrous tidings appeared at the Appian gate, and rumour, 


162 


Rome and Carthage. 


as was natural, went even beyond the truth. It was 
believed that both consuls were dead, and 
of news at that no portion of the army had survived. 

Rome. Livy, the most graphic of historians or of 

romancers, fairly shrinks from the attempt to picture the 
scene of horror which followed. Each flying messen¬ 
ger, as he reached the walls, fancied himself, or was 
fancied by the Romans, to be but the forerunner of the 
dread Hannibal himself. He knew not, indeed, as he 
drew near the city, whether the Numidian cavalry were 
not even then before him, as their own messengers. A 
panic-stricken multitude, thinking that all save their 
lives was lost, made for the gates, and for a moment it 
seemed likely that Hannibal when he came would find 
Rome indeed, but no Roman citizens within her. 

Ahy other state must have succumbed to such a blow ; 
but now, as after the Trasimene, it was the Senate, or 
what remained of it, who saved the city 
from being abandoned by her own children. 
They alone preserved their presence of 
mind ; and it was the old ex-Dictator, Fabius, who was, 
once more, the soul of their deliberations. By his ad¬ 
vice the gates were closed to prevent the exodus of the 
inhabitants. The citizens should not be saved, so he 
willed it, unless the city was saved with them. Messen¬ 
gers were sent along the southern military road to see, 
as Livy pathetically expresses it, “ if the gods, touched 
by one pang of pity, had left aught remaining to the Ro¬ 
man name,” and to bring the first tidings of the expected 
advance of Hannibal. It was difficult for the Senate to 
deliberate at all; for the cries of thousands of women 
outside the Senate House, who were bewailing their ab¬ 
sent husbands, or fathers, or sons, as though they were 
all dead, drowned the voice of those who spoke. Orders 


Panic 

checked. 


Hannibal does not Advance. 


163 


were issued that the women, if wail they must, should 
wail within their own houses, and henceforward silence, 
mournful indeed but dignified, was observed in the pub¬ 
lic streets. All assemblies of the people were prohib¬ 
ited. M. Junius Pera was named Dictator; the city 
legions were called out; the whole male population— 
some eight thousand slaves and criminals among them 
—were armed, and the angry gods were propitiated, as 
best they might, by the punishment of guilty Vestals, and 
by the burying alive of Greek and Gallic men and 
women in the Roman Forum. 

After a few days more hopeful news came. A de¬ 
spatch arrived from Varro himself, saying that he had 
escaped from the carnage, and was doing his best to re¬ 
organize and to rally the ten thousand demoralized 
fugitives who had at last found their way to Canusium. 
More important still, Hannibal was not on his way to 
Rome, but was still encamped on the field of Cannae. 
The Romans breathed more freely; but from other parts 
of the Roman world tidings of fresh danger, fresh disas¬ 
ter, or fresh shame, came pouring in. One Carthaginian 
fleet was threatening Lilybaeum, another Syracuse. The 
force sent northwards to watch the Gauls had fallen into 
an ambuscade and had been cut off to a man. Worse 
still, a body of Roman nobles who had escaped from 
Cannae, thinking that all was lost save their honour, 
had determined, regardless even of their honour, to fly 
beyond the seas, and would have carried their purpose 
out had not the young Scipio rushed in amongst them, 
sword in hand, and sworn that he would slay anyone 
who would not bind himself never to desert his coun¬ 
try. 

And why did not Hannibal march at once on the 
panic-stricken city ? Roman historians and Roman 


164 Rome and Carthage. 

generals could not refrain from expressing their thank¬ 
fulness and their surprise at his dilatoriness 
Hannibal or bis blindness. In Juvenal's time Roman 
mRoST schoolboys declaimed upon it in their weekly 
themes. Maherbal, the master of the 
lumidian cavalry—if indeed the story be true, and not 
what the Romans imagined ought to have been true— 
exclaimed, in an outburst of vexation at the chance 
which was thrown away, that the gods had taught Han¬ 
nibal how to win, but not how to use, a victory ; and the 
greatest master of modern warfare, Napoleon himself, 
has joined in the general chorus of condemnation. But 
perhaps the best and the all-but-sufficing answer to those 
who say that Hannibal ought to have advanced on Rome, 
is the simple fact that Hannibal himself, the foremost 
general of all time, and statesman as well as general, did 
not attempt it. Moreover, all the arguments which we 
have seen held good after Trasimene against such an 
advance, held equally good now. There were still the 
stone walls of the city. There was still the population of 
Latium and of the surrounding country, as yet untouched 
by the war, hostile to him to a man; still—after the first 
few days of panic, of which Hannibal, laden with booty 
and with half Italy between him and Rome, could hardly 
have taken advantage—the unbroken resolution of the 
citizens themselves. Hannibal never liked sieges, and 
was seldom successful in those he undertook; he forbore 
at this moment to besiege even Canusium with its feeble 
and panic-stricken defenders. Finally, his long-cherished 
hope of the defection of the Italian allies seemed now at 
length to be not only within his sight, but, if only he was 
patient or prudent, already almost within his grasp. The 
battle of Cannae had been too much for the resolution of 
Apulia; Samnium had already in part joined him ; Lu- 


Greatness of Rome. 


i6 5 


Greatness 
of Rome. 


cania and Bruttium rose in revolt. The Greek cities in 
the south were prepared to hail him as their deliverer! 
Campania, it was whispered, was wavering in the balance, 
and ready at the sight of the conqueror to go over to 
Carthage. Thus deprived of her allies, Rome, he hoped; 
would fall almost by Tier own weight. 

Never did the self-control and the true nobility of 
soul of Hannibal, never did the unbending resolution of 
the Roman Senate, display itself more con¬ 
spicuously than at this moment. Never, in 
the very moment of victory, did Hannibal 
lose his head. The good of his country was even now 
nearer to his heart—and doubtless it was the only thing 
that was nearer to his heart—than his hatred to Rome. 
Thinking that it might be advantageous to Carthage to 
conclude peace, and that she might now do so almost on 
her own terms, he called the Roman prisoners together 
—almost the only occasion in his life on which he brought 
himself to speak a friendly word to any Roman—and 
told them that he did not wish that the strife which he 
was waging should be internecine ; he was willing to take 
a ransom for them, and some of their number might go 
on their parole to Rome to negotiate the matter. Even 
: n the first flush of his victory he bade Carthalo offer 
terms of peace, if he saw that the Roman wishes turned 
in that direction. But the Romans also rose to the 
emergency. Fifty years before, as has been already 
related, they had told the victorious Epirot that Rome 
never negotiated with an enemy so long as he was on 
Italian soil; and the answer which they had given to 
Pyrrhus then in words they gave now to a general greater 
than Pyrrhus, and crowned with a far more overwhelming 
victory, by their deeds. They spoke no word and thought 
no thought of peace. Their want of troops was urgent, 





166 


Rome and Carthage. 


but they refused, as the story goes, to buy with money 
men who had disgraced themselves by surrender; and 
when Varro neared the city, obnoxious though he was to 
the aristocracy on account of his low birth and of his 
career, and branded with the defeat of Cannae, not one 
word of reproach was uttered against him. His efforts 
only, not his failures or his mistakes, were remembered, 
and the citizens went forth in a body to meet him, and 
thanked him, in words that are ever memorable, for not 
having despaired of the republic. The Roman historians 
have a right, here at least, to congratulate themselves 
that they were not as were the Carthaginians. The de¬ 
feated Roman general received a vote of thanks for his 
unsuccessful efforts : a defeated Carthaginian would have 
been nailed to a cross. 

After the battle of Cannae the character of the war is 
changed, and it loses something of the intensity of the 

interest attached to it. Hitherto the tide of 

Unbroken . . . 

success of invasion has run, as Dr. Arnold has pointed 
Hannibal. , . ■> • i 

out in an eloquent passage, in one single 
current and that current so magnificent and so resistless, 
that it rivets the attention of even the most careless 
spectators. There has been no reverse, hardly even a 
check, from the moment when Hannibal left his winter 
quarters at New Carthage, till he stood victorious on the 
field of Cannae. The most vivid of historians can do 
little by description to make Hannibal’s achievements 
stand out in more startling relief than they do already 
by their bare recital. The dullest annalist, if only he 
record them truly, cannot make them seem common¬ 
place. The eye can hardly wander as it sees the great 
drama develop itself step by step, and sweep irresistibly 
on towards what seems its legitimate and necessary 
conclusion. The obstacles interposed by Nature herself 


Magnanimity of Romans. 


167 


—rivers and marshes and mountain chains—seemed 
interposed only to stimulate the energies and to heighten 
the glory of him who could surmount them all. Each 
difficulty overcome is an earnest to Hannibal of his 
power to grapple with the next, and is used by him as a 
stepping-stone towards it. That they had crossed the 
Pyrenees, he told his soldiers when they hesitated on 
the Rhone, was a proof that they could pass the Alps. 
When they had reached the summit of the Alps, he told 
them they had already seized the citadel of Italy, and 
had only to walk down and take possession of the city. 
Four times over he had now measured his sword with 
the future conquerors of the world, and each time he 
had been victorious in an ever ascending series of suc¬ 
cesses. At the Ticinus he first met the Roman cavalry, 
and it was their hasty retreat from the field of battle 
which alone saved them from a rout. At the Trebia, 
however the consul might try to disguise it, it was no 
retreat at all, it was a total rout. At the Trasimene it 
was neither retreat nor rout, it was the extermination of 
an army. At Cannae it was the extermination, not of 
one but of two armies, and each of them twice its usual 
size. This was the pinnacle of Hannibal’s success, and 
a pinnacle indeed it was. 

' / Almost as wonderful as Hannibal’s victories over 
/ Nature or his enemies, were his victories over his own 
I followers. Under the spell of his genius, 

\ the discordant members of a motley Car- Hannibaf ° f 
\ thaginian army—disaffected Libyans and 
J Numidians, barbarous and lethargic Spaniards, fierce 
\ and fickle Gauls—were welded into a homogeneous 
/ whole, which combined the utmost play of individual 
I prowess with all the precision of a machine. No whis- 
V per of disaffection or of mutiny was ever heard in Han- 


168 Rome and Carthage. 

nibal’s camp. Italians deserted by thousands to Han¬ 
nibal ; but no Hannibalian veteran, even when his star 
was on its wane, ever deserted to Rome. Politic as he 
was brave, and generous as he was far-sighted, Hanni¬ 
bal could arouse alike the love and the fear, the calm 
confidence and the passionate enthusiasm of all the 
various races who served under his standard. The best 
general, a high authority has said, is he who makes the 
fewest mistakes ; but what single mistake can the keen¬ 
est critic point out which marred the progress or 
chequered the success of these three first extraordinary 
years ? They are years, moreover, any one of which 
might have made or marred the reputation of any lesser 
general. Unfortunately we know Hannibal only through 
his enemies. They have done their best to malign his 
character ; they have called him cruel, and, happily, al¬ 
most every specific charge of cruelty supplies us, even 
with our imperfect knowledge, with the materials for its 
own refutation. They talked of “ Punic ill faith ” till 
they came themselves to believe in its existence, or to 
think that the name proved itself. But what people or 
what town, it may well be asked, which Hannibal had 
ever promised to support, did he voluntarily abandon, 
or of what single act of treachery can it be proved that 
he was guilty ? They made as light as they could even 
of his achievements, by attributing to Phoenician cun¬ 
ning, or to the blind forces of Nature, the severity of 
defeats which no patriotic Roman could believe were 
due to his individual genius alone, for it was an indi¬ 
vidual genius such as they had never seen or imagined. 
A storm of sleet at Trebia, the mist at the Trasimene, 
the wind and clouds of dust or a ruse de giterre of some 
deserters at Cannae—such were the transparent fictions 
by which the Romans attempted to disguise from others. 


Genius of Hannibal. 


169 


Genius of 
Hannibal. 


and perhaps even from themselves, that they had found 
their master. We know Hannibal, let us repeat it once 
more, only from his enemies ; but in what character, 
even as painted by his friends, can we discern such vivid 
and such unmistakable marks of greatness ? The out¬ 
line is commanding, imperial, heroic; and there is no 
detail with which our materials enable us to fill it in at 
all, which is not in peifect harmony with the whole. 

After Cannae the tide of invasion ceases to flow on¬ 
ward in one irrepressible sweep. It is broken up into a 
number of smaller currents, which, though 
they are doubtless each planned by the 
ruling mind, and conducted by the master 
hand, are often in the nature of by-play rather than 
have any direct bearing on the main issues of the war. 
They are, moreover, always difficult and often impossi¬ 
ble to follow. The Romans, taught by the experience 
which they had bought so bitterly on four battlefields, 
decline any longer to trust themselves within the reach 
of Hannibal’s arm, or to stake their safety on any single 
blow; while Hannibal, lacking the reinforcements which 
he had a right to expect, and which it is impossible to 
believe that the Carthaginian government, had they 
been animated by a tithe of the spirit of their general, 
could not have despatched to him before this, has to 
adapt the plan of his campaign to his altered circum¬ 
stances and his ever-straitening means. The Numidian 
cavalry, as they die off, have to be replaced by Gauls, 
and the Libyan and Spanish veterans by Samnites or 
Lucanians, who had long since bowed their necks to 
the Roman yoke. Isolated sieges, embassies to distant 
potentates, pressing messages to Carthage, rapid 
marches and countermarches, ambuscades and sur¬ 
prises, the sudden swoop on Rome, and the doom 


Rome and Carthage. 


170 

of Carthage, recognized by Hannibal in the ghastly 
head of his brother Hasdrubal, thrown with Roman 
brutality into his camp—these still lend life and variety 
and a deadly interest to the struggle such as we find 
in few other wars; but we feel all the time that the 
war is not what it was. It is not that Hannibal's eye 
has grown dim or his natural force abated. His right 
hand never lost its cunning. Invincible as ever in the 
field, we shall see Hannibal, for years to come, march¬ 
ing wherever he likes, no Roman general—and there 
were sometimes half a dozen of them round him—daring 
to say him nay. Following the example of Fabius, they 
dogged his footsteps, or hung upon the hills above him, 
while he encamped fearlessly in the plain below; but 
when he turned his face towards one and the other, 
they scattered before him in all directions as the jackals 
before a lion. Yet we feel throughout, what Hannibal 
must soon have come to feel himself, that fate had at 
length declared against him. It is a noble, but a hope¬ 
less struggle; and we are fain to turn away from the 
spectacle of so heroic a soul struggling against what it 
knows to be inevitable. It is indeed a psychological 
puzzle how any one man—even though he were the 
greatest product of the Phoenician race—can have com¬ 
bined such opposite, nay such contradictory qualities as 
must have met in the man who, like one of the world- 
stormers of more modern times, Attila or Zinghis Khan 
or Tamerlane, could carry everything before him in one 
impetuous and overwhelming sweep of conquest, from 
Saguntum to Cannae in the three first years of the war, 
and then for its twelve remaining years could maintain 
the struggle by a warfare which was, in the main, defen¬ 
sive, hoping against hope, and each year confined to 
narrower limits with an ever-decreasing force against an 


Rtvolt of Capua. 


1 7 I 

ever-increasing foe. It would be well worth the while 
of the military student to trace, if it were possible with 
accuracy, the means by which the genius of Hannibal, 
as great in defence as in attack, and in patience as in 
impetuosity, prolonged for thirteen years a warfare, 
which, if only the Romans had been led by a Hannibal, 
or the Carthaginians by any one but him, must, in one 
way or the other, have been brought to a close almost 
at once. But we cannot do so ; for at the very time 
that the war undergoes the change which has been just 
described, we lose also the guidance of the historian 
Polybius, who, if any one, could have enabled us to fol¬ 
low closely its vicissitudes. 

Although, therefore, we have dwelt at length upon 
the first three years of the war, wherein victories and 
defeats are on so gigantic a scale, and where each step 
can be traced with accuracy, or has a direct bearing on 
the main result, it seems consistent alike with the scope 
and object of this book, and with our own views of what 
is desirable, or even possible, to pass more lightly over 
its remaining thirteen years, endeavouring mainly to 
bring into relief those incidents which appeal to the 
imagination, which are characteristic of the rival nations 
or of their leaders, and which are of universal or of last¬ 
ing significance. - 

CHAPTER XIII. 

REVOLT OF CAPUA. SIEGE OF SYRACUSE. 

(b.c. 216-212.) 

The victory of Cannae led almost immediately to the 
revolt of Capua, a city second only to Rome in wealth 
and power, and able to put into the field, 
when disposed to do so, a force of thirty Revolt of 

. ... Capua. 

thousand men. But this acquisition was 

shorn of half its value by the stipulation made by the 



172 


Rome and Carthage. 


ease-loving inhabitants and granted by Hannibal, that 
no Capuan citizen should be required to serve in his 
army. It was an arrangement which cost him dear ; but 
cost him what it might, it was ever afterwards religiously 
observed by him. Naples Hannibal had already tried 
to capture by a coup de main , but, failing in the attempt, 
he had not cared to besiege it in form ; nor was he 
more successful at Nola, which was prevented from 
revolting by the energy and skill of M. Claudius Mar- 
cellus, the ablest general whom the agony of the last 
three years had brought to the front; perhaps as able as 
any whom the Second Punic War produced for Rome 
at all. 

As consul, six years before, Marcellus had slain with 
his own hand the huge Gallic chieftain Viridomarus, 
and had, for the third and last time in Ro¬ 
man history, dedicated the spolia opima 
in the temple of Jupiter Feretrius. When, after the 
battle of Cannae, Varro was recalled to Rome, it was 
Marcellus who had taken the command of the 10,000 
Roman survivors at Canusium. Like Fabius, Marcellus 
knew how to avoid defeat, but he knew better than 
Fabius how and when to strike a vigorous blow. If 
Fabius deserved to be called the shield of Rome, Mar¬ 
cellus might with equal right be called its sword. He 
was a rough soldier, uncultured as Marius, and hardly 
less cruel; but during the next eight eventful years 
Rome could hardly have done without him. The dread 
of Hannibal had, at length, taught the city to know a 
good general, and to keep him when she had found him, 
and she showed her appreciation of Marcellus by 
breaking through forever the insane tradition which 
brought a military command to an end on a predeter¬ 
mined day. For the next eight years his is the name 


Hannibal winters at Capua. 


173 


in the Roman annals which we hear most often, and 
that on all the most critical occasions. He served, 
in fact, as consul and proconsul in alternate years in 
almost continuous succession ; and when, at last, he fell 
in an ambuscade, his body was treated with marked 
honour by the great Hannibal himself. 

Foiled at Nola, Hannibal turned his attention to 
Casilinum, a town situated on the Vulturnus, and then 
containing a mixed garrison of Praenestines 
and Perusians who had taken shelter within winters at 
its walls, when they heard of the disaster of Capua ' 
Cannae. Leaving a sufficient force to blockade the 
place, he went with the remainder into winter quarters 
at Capua, a few miles to the south. It has been re¬ 
marked by many writers, modern as well as ancient, 
that Capua proved a Cannae to Hannibal. Given over to 
luxury and to Greek vices, it was certainly not the place 
best suited for the winter retirement of an overstrained 
army; and doubtless the troops, who had ere now 
wintered amongst the snows of the Apennines or in the 
open plains of Apulia, must have luxuriated in the 
easeful quarters which Hannibal's sword had opened for 
them. It is true also, as has already been pointed out, 
that this year was a turning point in the war; but that it 
was so is due to other causes than the luxury of Capua, 
and it would not seem to be true that the troops were in 
any way demoralized by their winter’s comfort. They 
were irresistible as ever in the field. The real difference 
was that the Roman generals had learned in the school 
of adversity not to trust themselves within the reach of 
Hannibal’s arm, and from this time to the end of the 
war in Italy they acted on the Fabian maxim, and never 
gave him an opportunity of fighting a pitched battle, or, 
what was the same thing, of giving them a crushing defeat. 

N 


i74 


Rome and Carthage. 


The consuls for the year 215 were the old Dictator 
Fabius and Tib. Sempronius Gracchus. Incredible ex¬ 
ertions were made by Rome to bear the 
tionsofRome stra ^ n which was put upon her. Double 
taxes were imposed and paid, and freewill 
contributions were offered by the citizens, which it was 
understood were not to be repaid till the treasury was 
full; in other words, not till the war was over. The 
year, therefore, which followed the butchery of eight 
legions at Cannae saw fourteen new ones raised to taktf 
their place, six of them in other parts of the Roman 
world, and the remaining eight in Italy itself. On his 
side, Hannibal can hardly have mustered more than 
40,000 men, even if we include his recent levies in 
Samnium. It must be remembered that till towards the 
close of 216, after fighting four pitched battles, and 
marching and countermarching through the whole of 
Italy, Hannibal had received no single soldier and 
drawn not a single penny from the home government 
of Carthage. Never before or after was war so made to 
support itself, and never, even in the hands of the au¬ 
thor of that sinister maxim, was it waged with such as¬ 
tonishing results. 

But if Hannibal’s victories had not yet done for him 
all that he had hoped in Italy itself, might it not be pos¬ 
sible to gain his object by taking a wider 

Hannibal’s sweep ? If Italy could not be armed against 
wide projects. r j 0 

Rome, might not the surrounding countries, 
whose existence was already threatened, be armed 
against Italy and Rome alike ? Circumstances, at the 
moment, seemed to smile on the project ; for Hiero, 
the ancient and faithful ally of Rome, was just dead, 
and Hieronymus, his grandson and successor, straight¬ 
way joined the Carthaginians. Sardinia, too, was plan- 


Hannibal at Tifata. 


175 


ning a revolt from the city which had stolen her with 
such infamous bad faith from Carthaginian rule; and 
about the same time ambassadors arrived in Hannibal’s 
camp from Philip, king of Macedon, offering to conclude 
with him an alliance offensive and defensive. But the 
bright vision rose before his eyes only to vanish away. 
The revolt of Sardinia was stamped out before it came 
to a head. Hieronymus was weak and foolish, and, 
setting himself to imitate the able Dionysius who had 
once ruled Syracuse, showed that he was able to imi¬ 
tate him only in his arrogance and his vices, and was 
soon despatched by the well-deserved dagger of the as¬ 
sassin. Finally, the Macedonian ambassadors, when 
returning with the treaty which had just been concluded 
between Hannibal and Philip, fell, as ill-luck would 
have it, into the hands of the Romans, and so gave them 
a timely warning to prepare for what might otherwise 
have burst upon them like a thunder-clap. 

Amidst such hopes and such disappointments the 
year passed away. Throughout its course Hannibal had 
retained Tifata, a hill above Capua, as his 
headquarters. No better place could have Hanmbal at 
been chosen. Here he could wait in safety 
the results, if any, of the alliances he was planning, 
here receive the long-expected reinforcements from Car¬ 
thage if ever they should come. Here he could protect 
Capua, his latest and his most important acquisition ; 
here with his one small army he could keep three sepa¬ 
rate armies, headed by no meaner generals than Fabius, 
Gracchus, and Marcellus, at bay, and, dealing his blows 
upon them in rapid succession, could threaten now 
Cumae, now Naples, and now Nola; till at last the ap¬ 
proach of winter warned him to transfer his troops to 
his former quarters at Arpi in Apulia. 


176 


Rome and Carthage. 


The elections for the year 214 b. c. —after the consul 
Fabius had given a solemn warning to the electors to 
let military cons'derations alone influence them at such 
a time of need—ended, as was to be expected, and as 
Fabius had himself intended, in the re-election of the 
Mentor himself, Marcellus being chosen as his colleague. 
Seldom in Roman history had two such men held office 
at the same time, and the memories of the older citizens 
had to travel back to the days of Decius Mus, or even 
of Papirius Cursor, till they found, or thought they 
found, a parallel to it. In this year, indeed, and for 
some years to come, Rome was likely enough to need 
her shield as well as her sword. The fourteen legions 
which had been thought sufficient in the previous year, 
were raised now to the still more astonishing number of 
eighteen ; and the wealthier citizens contributed from 
their private means the sums which were necessary to 
raise the payment of the sailors of the fleet. 

Capua had already begun to tremble for her safety; 
but she was reassured when the movement of Flannibal 
showed that it was his intention not only to 
against 1 "* 5 keep what he had already won in Campania, 
Hanmbal. possible, to win the whole. In vain, 

however, did he attempt to surprise or to bring over 
Cumae, Naples, and Puteoli, seaport towns which would 
have done good service by opening direct communication 
with Carthage. Flanno, moreover, on coming to co¬ 
operate with him, with the numerous Lucanian and Brut- 
tian levies which he had raised, was intercepted by Grac¬ 
chus in the heart of Samnium. Gracchus promised free¬ 
dom, in the event of victory, to the armed slaves of whom 
his force consisted; and in the battle which ensued 
conscious that they were carrying their liberty as well as 
their lives in their hands, they tut to pieces Hanno’s 


Hannibal gains Tarentum. 


177 


army, and received their reward. The word of a Gracchus, 
in this as in other epochs of Roman history, was his 
bond ; and a bond which was a first-rate security. These 
reverses brought Hannibal’s plans of Campanian con¬ 
quest to an abrupt conclusion, and when he received a 
friendly message from Tarentum, a place more important 
to him, just then, even than the Campanian towns, from 
its proximity to Macedon, he paid it a flying visit. But 
here, too, the Romans had anticipated him, and Fabius, 
taking advantage of his absence, besieged and recap¬ 
tured Casilinum. When Hannibal went into his next 
winter quarters at Salapia in Apulia, the tide of victory 
had clearly turned against him. He was already waging 
a warfare which was mainly defensive, and it might have 
seemed to anyone who had not felt the terrors of his 
spring, that if only the three armies which lay watching 
him during the winter had ventured to beard the lion 
which lay crouching in his den, they would have had a / 
chance of bringing the Second Punic War to a conclusion 
then. 

During the next two years the interest of the war is 
for the first time, in some measure, diverted from Hanni¬ 
bal. The great Carthaginian, though he had 
not yet spoken aloud the word “ impossible,” 
must have occasionally whispered it to him¬ 
self. He was still without adequate reinforcements from 
home; for the considerable armament, which the news 
of Hannibal’s triumphant progress through Italy had at 
last shamed the Carthaginians into raising for him, had, 
when they were on the point of embarkation, been di¬ 
verted to Sardinia and Spain. In this last country the 
star of Carthage was not just then in the ascendant, and 
Hannibal, who had received only a paltry force of some 
forty elephants and some 4,000 Numidian cavalry from 




Hannibal 

gains 

Tarentum. 



*73 


Rome and Carthage. 


his countrymen at home, was compelled, partly from ne¬ 
cessity, and partly, it would seem, from lassitude, to spend 
the greater part of the summer of 213 in the neighbour¬ 
hood of Tarentum, without attempting any active opera¬ 
tions. With admirable policy, he had, even in the mo¬ 
ment of disappointment in the preceding year, abstained 
from ravaging the Tarentine lands while he harried those 
of the surrounding towns, and now he reaped the result. 
In the course of the winter he was half offered, and he 
half forced for himself, an entrance into the city, though 
he was unable to eject the recently arrived Roman garri¬ 
son from the citadel. Other and lesser Greek towns in 
the south followed the example of this, the greatest of 
them all; and Hannibal, compelled to relax his grasp 
upon Campania, made up for its loss by appropriating to 
himself a large part of Magna Grsecia. 

Meanwhile the war, which seemed for the moment to 
have spent its force in Italy, had broken out with fresh 
fury in Sicily. Marcellus, the best general 
Sicily 11 whom the Romans possessed, was des¬ 

patched to quell the revolt. The whole 
island, with few exceptions, had declared for Carthage; 
and the active emissaries of Hannibal, the desperation 
of the soldiers who had deserted from Rome, and the 
cruelties of the Romans in the first towns which they re¬ 
captured, cut off all hopes of a reconciliation. The Car¬ 
thaginian government too, from some unexplained rea¬ 
son, now woke from its sleep, and sent Himilco with 
considerable reinforcements to Sicily. Had they only 
sent half the force to Italy in 216 which they sent in 214 
to Sicily, the war might have had a different course. 
They were willing and able, it seemed, to send rein¬ 
forcements at a time and to a place where they were not 
much needed; they would not send them at the time 


Siege of Syracuse. 179 

and to the place where they would have been all-impor¬ 
tant. 

After massacring the inhabitants of several towns, 
Marcellus laid siege to Syracuse; but all his efforts were 
frustrated by the science and by the engines of the 
famous mathematician Archimedes, and after eight 
months of chequered warfare, he was obliged to convert 
the siege into a blockade. 

Syracuse was the greatest Greek city in Sicily, possibly 
the greatest of all Greek cities. It contained within its 
walls four distinct towns—the island of Ortygia, the old¬ 
est and the strongest part of the city ; Achradina, or the 
city proper, crowded with magnificent build¬ 
ings: and the two suburbs of Tycha and Siege of 
Neapolis. The whole had been recently 
surrounded by a wall eighteen miles in circumference, 
which in part abutted on the sea, but was in part carried 
over rugged hills or low-lying marshes, defensible in 
themselves, and now rendered doubly strong by art. 
The city possessed two harbours, in the larger of which 
the Carthaginian fleet, under Bomilcar, was riding at 
anchor, while a Carthaginian army, under Himilco, 
hovered near the walls, or made flying expeditions to 
other parts of Sicily, thus distracting the attention of the 
besiegers. The blockade, therefore, was never effective 
or complete, and it is not to be wondered at that it was 
nearly three years before the city fell. 

It was indeed treachery from within rather than force 
from without, which ultimately enabled Marcellus, in 
the year 212, to gain possession of the 
heights of Epipolae to the rear of the city, Syracuse f 
and, making these his basis, to conquer in 
succession its different portions. The two suburbs fell 
first, and the plunder which they yielded whetted the 


180 Rome and Carthage. 

appetites of the soldiery for the still richer stores which 
lay behind the walls of Achradina and Ortygia. It was 
now too late for Bomilcar or Himilco to save the city. 
Bomilcar sailed away without striking a blow, and the 
army of Himilco, which lay encamped on the low grounds 
>f the Anapus, fell victims to the fever which had so 
often before saved Syracuse from a besieging force. 
By a curious caprice of fortune, the best defence of the 
city was now turned against its defenders, while it left 
its assailants on the higher ground unscathed. The 
Roman deserters and the mercenaries had long estab¬ 
lished a reign of terror within the city. Having nothing 
to hope, and little therefore to fear, they were bent on 
holding the place to the bitter end. But when Marcellus 
had been admitted by some of his partisans into the 
island of Ortygia, Achradina could no longer offer re¬ 
sistance. The deserters and the mercenaries, the only 
portion of the inhabitants who deserved punishment, 
managed to escape by night, and the remainder threw 
themselves on the mercy of Marcellus. They might 
well expect to receive it, for they had been involved in 
hostilities which were not of their own seeking, and it 
would be hard if the short-lived folly of Hieronymus 
should be held by Marcellus to have effaced the recollec- 
on of the fifty years’ fidelity of Hiero his grandfather. 
But it seldom suited the Romans to remember past ser¬ 
vices or extenuating circumstances when they had any¬ 
thing to gain by forgetting them. Marcellus, as Livy 
tells us, had burst into tears when he first stood on 
Epipolae and saw Syracuse, as he fancied, in his power 
beneath him. But these were not tears of compassion, 
or, if they were, they were not forthcoming now when 
they were most needed. The city was given over to 
plunder, and the death of Archimedes while intent upon 


Fate of Syracuse. 


181 

a problem, a man whom—-just as Alexander bade his 
troops spare the house of Pindar in the sack of Thebes 
—even the rough Marcellus had wished to save, gave 
proof that plunder was not the only aim of the infu- 
iated soldiery. 

So fell Syracuse, the virgin city, which had seen two 
Athenian armaments perish beneath its walls ; which 
had for centuries saved Sicily from becom¬ 
ing altogether, what its greater part then ^ate of Syra- 
was, a Carthaginian appanage ; which had 
once and again, when its turn came, under Dionysius or 
Timoleon, almost driven those same Carthaginians from 
the island ; and once, under Agathocles, had threatened 
the existence of Carthage herself. It fell to rise no 
more, at least to its former opulence. Its temples 
were left standing, because they would not pay 
for moving; and they belonged to the conqueror as 
much where they were as if they had been transferred 
to Rome; but the choicest works of art—vases and 
columns, paintings and statues—were swept off to 
adorn the imperial city. In so doing Marcellus set an 
example only too fatally followed by the conquerors 
who succeeded him. It was a practice new in Roman 
warfare then, and to be condemned at all times and 
under all circumstances: a practice cruel and destruc¬ 
tive to the states despoiled, and useless for all moral or 
high artistic purposes to the despoiler. 


Rome and Cartha°e. 


182 


CHAPTER XIV. 

SIEGE OF CAPUA AND HANNIBAL’S MARCH ON ROME. 

(212-208 B. C.) 

We have hitherto concentrated our attention as much 
as possible on the main current of the war in Italy; but 
. it must not be forgotten that throughout 

Importance 0 

of war in these first six years which we have de- 

Spain ' scribed in detail, a side conflict was raging 

in Spain, the result of which might go far to decide that 
in Italy. To the importance of the Spanish contest the 
Romans and the Carthaginians were equally alive. It 
was from Spain, if from any country, that Hannibal 
must draw his reinforcements ; and it was in Spain, if 
anywhere, that those reinforcements must be intercepted 
and cut down. The Romans saw that if a second army 
crossed the Alps and swooped down upon the north of 
Italy, while Hannibal was at his pleasure overrunning 
the south, the city would be taken between two fires, and 
could not long resist. To Hannibal, on the other hand, 
Spain was tho new world which the genius of his family 
had called into existence. The names of his father, 
Hamilcar, and of his brother-in-law the elder Hasdrubal, 
were still names of power among the Spanish tribes 
whom they had conquered or conciliated, and the 
younger Hasdrubal, a worthy member of the same 
family, had been left in Spain by Hannibal when he 
started on his great expedition, to preserve the family 
traditions there, and to raise fresh levies for the Italian 


war 


The Scipios in Spain. 183 

P. Scipio, as we have seen, instead of returning in the 
autumn of b. c. 218 with all speed and with all his forces 
from Massilia to Italy, where he might pos¬ 
sibly have met and crushed the worn-out Successes of 
J bcipios. 

troops of Hannibal as they descended from 
the Alps, had sent the bulk of his army straight to their 
Spanish destination, while he himself returned to Italy 
with only a few followers. After his defeats at the Tici- 
nus and the Trebia, and while the memories of the 
Trasimene Lake were still fresh in the Roman minds, 
he was sent off to Spain with a naval and military force, 
which a less courageous and self-reliant people would 
have been unwilling to spare. There he joined Cnaeus, 
and henceforward the two brothers carried on the war 
in common, bringing over Spanish tribes as much by 
their address as by their arms, and winning, if the ac¬ 
counts they sent home were true, an almost unbroken 
series of successes. After making sure of the country 
to the north of the Ebro, the Scipios crossed that 
boundary river, sent to their homes the Spanish hos¬ 
tages which, having been deposited by Hannibal in 
Saguntum, fell by the caprice of a Saguntine citizen 
into their hands, and in the autumn of the year 216— 
the year, it should be remembered, of the battle of Can¬ 
nae—defeated Hasdrubal in a pitched battle near a town 
called Ibera, when he was on the eve of starting for Italy 
with the large army he had recently raised in Spain or 
had received from Carthage. Rightly viewed, there¬ 
fore, the battle of Ibera, though the place at which it 
was fought is quite unknown, was one of the most de¬ 
cisive in the whole of the war, for it prevented the de¬ 
spatch of reinforcements to Hannibal in the year when 
they would have made him wholly irresistible. 

The two brothers made the most of their success. 


184 


Rome and Carthage. 


Their death. 


They enrolled Celtiberian mercenaries—the first in¬ 
stance of such a practice on a large scale in 
Roman history ; they won victories which, 
if they were not half what their despatches represented 
them to be, were yet signal victories ; they formed an 
alliance with Syphax, a Numidian prince, and seemed 
in B. c. 212 to be on the point of ejecting the Cartha¬ 
ginians from Spain, when, in the mid career of their 
success, they inadvertently separated from each other. 
They were then attacked by Hasdrubal and by Mago, 
who had been recently sent thither from Carthage, in 
detail, their armies were defeated and dispersed, and 
themselves slain. It seemed for the moment as if the 
Romans would be driven from Spain in the very year 
in which they had confidently counted on driving out 
the Carthaginians. But the death of the elder Scipios, 
as we shall see, opened a free field for a younger and 
still abler member of the family, and one whose high 
destiny was to accomplish in Spain what his father and 
uncle had been compelled to leave unfinished. 

While these events were taking place in Spain, the 
flame of war had burst out afresh in Italy. Early, it would 
seem, in the winter of B. c. 212, Taren- 
successes of turn had fallen into Hannibal’s hands, and 
Hannibal. j n tj ie campaign thus begun the hero seemed 
to awake, like a giant refreshed, from his year-long re¬ 
pose. He was needed each moment at Tarentum, where 
the citadel still held out; he was needed yet more at 
Capua, round which the Roman armies, like vultures 
scenting their prey afar, seemed to be gathering for the 
last time. The home government of Carthage itself 
needed his controlling mind, the war in Sicily needed 
it, the war in Spain, and the war in Greece. His spirit 
and his influence, if not his bodily presence, were needed 


Siege of Capua. 


185 

everywhere, and everywhere once again they seemed to 
be. Six Roman armies were in the field against him. 
By a searching inquisition every free-born citizen—many 
of them below the age of seventeen—had been swept 
into the ranks, which were intended not, indeed, to face 
him, for that they never dared to do, but to harass his 
movements; yet he managed, in spite of them all, to 
push the siege of the Tarentine citadel on the one hand, 
and, on the other, to show himself for a moment when 
required on the hills above Capua, where his mere ap¬ 
pearance caused the two consular armies which were 
threatening it to vanish away before him. One Roman 
army of irregulars he annihilated in Lucania; another of 
regular troops, under the praetor Fulvius, he annihilated 
in Apulia; while a third, consisting of the slaves liber¬ 
ated by Gracchus, as soon as their liberator had fallen 
in an ambuscade, dispersed in all directions, thinking 
that they had done enough for their step-mother Italy. 

But amidst all these brilliant achievements and these 
romantic shiftings of the war, the one point of fixed and 
central interest was the city of Capua. That 
guilty city had long felt that her turn must capua° f 
soon come ; she had gone now unpunished 
for nearly four years, and the safety and the honour of 
the Roman state alike demanded that the day of reckon¬ 
ing should be no longer postponed. The mere presence 
of two large armies in her neighbourhood during so con¬ 
siderable a part of these four years had caused a scarcity 
within her walls before even a sod was turned of 
the Roman lines of circumvallation. But Hannibal, 
appearing at Capua while his enemies thought he was 
in Iapygia, put the two armies which were threatening 
it to flight, and, as it would seem, revictualled it for the 
coming blockade. It was not till he had gone far to the 


i86 


Rome a?id Carthage. 


south again, and was scattering the smaller Roman ar¬ 
mies there in the manner which has just been described, 
that they ventured to close in once more around the 
place, and began the siege in earnest. News of every 
fresh disaster reached Rome from the track of Hanni¬ 
bal’s flying squadrons, and the Senate could only con¬ 
sole itself by the reflection that the consular armies of 
Fulvius and Appius, which had fled before Hannibal’s 
advance, were as yet intact, and were free during his 
absence, at all events, to prosecute the object which 
they had most at heart—the punishment of the guilty 
Capua. 

Caius Nero, the praetor, was ordered to co-operate 
with the consuls, Q. Fulvius Flaccus and App. Claudius 
Pulcher; and the three armies in their sev¬ 
eral camps, each with a large magazine 
established in a town to its rear, settled 
down before the devoted city. A double 
line of circumvallation was soon completed, the one to 
guard the besiegers from the sorties of the besieged, the 
other to repel the expected attack of Hannibal from 
without (b. C. 21 i). The days of Capua were clearly 
numbered unless help came from him. An adventurous 
Numidian from the garrison made his way unobserved 
through the double lines of the Romans and informed 
Hannibal of the danger of the city. Taking a select 
band of horsemen and light-armed troops, the Phoeni¬ 
cian hero started from Tarentum, and before the enemy 
dreamed of his approach he appeared on Mount Tifata. 
According to the plan which had been pre-arranged, a 
simultaneous attack was made on the Roman lines by 
the beleaguered garrison and by Hannibal. Some of 
the elephants, whose bulky frames had been with diffi¬ 
culty forced to keep pace with his cross-country march, 


Attempt of 
Hannibal to 
relieve, 
Capua. 


Hannibal's March on Rome. 


were killed in the attack. Hannibal threw their bodies 
into the ditch, and a few of his troops crossing over on 
the bridge thus formed found themselves within the 
Roman lines. But it was only for a moment. They 
were outnumbered and driven back, and Hannibal gave 
up all hope of thus raising the siege. 

One plan alone remained. He might advance on the 
capital; and the terror of the citizens when the danger 
which had so often approached them, and 
had so often been withdrawn, had at last 0 n Rome, 
really come, might drive them to recall for 
the defence of Rome the armies which were besieging 
Capua. Once more a Numidian messenger made his 
way through the Roman lines round Capua, and bade 
the citizens hold out bravely, for Hannibal’s departure 
did not mean that he had deserted them. It rather 
meant that he was making one more effort for their 
deliverance, and then he was off for Rome. The news 
of what was coming reached the city long before 
Hannibal reached it himself, perhaps before he wished 
to reach it. A few days’ delay would, he knew well, 
only increase the panic of the citizens. Slowly he 
advanced along the Latin road, passing each day some 
Latin fortress, and devastating the country right up to 
its walls beneath the eyes of its affrighted garrison. 
Before him fled a panic-stricken throng—-women and 
children, and aged men—leaving their homes like 
animals when the prairie is on fire, a prey to the de¬ 
stroyer. On he went, through Latium, through the only 
district of Italy which had not yet felt his dreaded 
presence, no one daring to say him nay, till he pitched 
his tent upon the Anio, only three miles from Rome, 
and the flaming villages announced in language that 
could not be mistaken that he was really there. He 



188 


Rome and Carthage. 


was there in fulfilment of his life-long vow; the hater 
face to face, at last, with the object of his deadly hate. 
He was there, the destroyer of every Roman army 
which had ventured to meet him, to destroy the city 
which had sent them forth. So thought at least the 
flying rustics and the mass of the Roman citizens. But 
so did not think the calm and clear-sighted Hannibal 
himself; nor yet, after the first days of panic had passed 
by, so thought the Roman Senate. The imagination, 
indeed, of the citizens pictured to themselves the total 
destruction of their armies at Capua. The air was filled 
with cries of women who ran wildly about the streets, 
or flocked to the temples of the gods, and, throwing 
themselves on their knees, raised their suppliant hands 
to heaven, or swept the altars with their long dis¬ 
hevelled hair. 

But the Roman Senate, as after Trasimene and after 
Cannae, was once more worthy of itself. When the 
terrible news of Hannibal’3 first approach 
before^Rome. came, they had been disposed to recall the 
whole of their armies to the defence of the 
capital; a measure of precaution which would have ful¬ 
filled Hannibal’s highest hopes and saved the be¬ 
leaguered Capua. But fresh confidence came. They 
recalled only Fulvius, who, marching by inner lines, 
amidst a population who bade him God-speed, managed 
to reach Rome by the Appian, just before Hannibal 
reached the Anio by the Latin Way. Two legions 
which had lately been got together in the country 
around Rome, when they were joined by the army 
which had just arrived, gave the city a respectable 
garrison, and Hannibal made no attack—he probably 
never intended to make one—on the city itself. Un¬ 
molested by the Romans and almost within their view, 


Hannibal's March on Rome. 189 

he ravaged the whole country round, destroying the 
gardens and the villages, and carrying off into his camp, 
with stern delight, the crops and the cattle, and the 
booty of every kind on which he could lay his hand. 
Then with a body of two thousand horsemen he rode 
right up to the Colline gate, and passed leisurely along 
the walls to the temple of Hercules, gazing wistfully at 
the cruel stones which alone stood between him and his 
hopes, and alone saved the inhabitants, Romans though 
they were, from his avenging sword. The fates were 
against him, but he must have felt that he had nobly 
kept his vow. 

Little wonder is it, when the facts themselves are so 
dramatic, and when the chief character is so heroic, that 
the imagination of those who recorded the scene ran 
riot in the process and filled in the details with what 
they thought ought to have happened. They pointed, 
for instance, their eulogies on the faith of the Romans in 
their own future, by telling us how they put up to auction 
the ground on which Hannibal’s camp was pitched, and 
how it was bought at its full value ; while Hannibal, by 
way of reprisals, offered for sale to his troops the silver¬ 
smiths’ shops in the Roman Forum, and flung his spear 
over the walls in token of his contempt and hate. But 
Hannibal was great enough to know when he had de¬ 
livered his blow, and he wasted no time in lamenting 
that it had failed. Accordingly he marched off north¬ 
ward into the Sabine country, which he had only skirted 
in his first campaign, and then sweeping round to the 
south he turned fiercely upon the Romans who were 
making believe to follow him, and after taking one 
distant look at the unbroken and impenetrable girdle of 
men, and earth, and iron, which girt Capua in, he left 
her to her inevitable fate. 


o 


Rome and Carthage. 


190 

Inevitable indeed it was; for the Romans knew no 
pity, and the citizens themselves must have felt that the 
murder of all the Romans residing in the city at the time 
of their revolt would have steeled even those who were 
naturally pitiful against them. The senators, 
Capua f abandoned to despair, shut themselves within 

their own houses, and left the responsibilities 
of the defence to the Numidian leaders. At last, when 
the surrender of the city was only a question of hours, 
they met at the house of one Vibius Virrius, the authoi 
of the revolt, and after holding high festival on such fare 
as the besieged city could supply, and could lend them 
courage for what they were about to do, they passed 
round the poisoned cup, and, to the number of twenty- 
seven, balked their Roman conquerors of their long- 
expected revenge. Of the remaining senators, when, 
next day, the gates were opened, twenty-five were sent 
by the orders of the consuls to Cales, and twenty-eight 
to Teanum; but close behind them followed the victor 
Fulvius, and by his command they were scourged and 
beheaded, one by one, before his eyes. When the 
bloody work was only half finished a despatch from the 
Senate arrived bidding him reserve for their decision the 
question of the punishment; but the butcher thrust it into 
his bosom, and it was not till the last head had fallen 
that he read the letter which might have postponed, but 
would hardly have averted, their fate. Three hundred 
noble Campanian youths were thrown into prison to 
perish, many of them, later, on a trumped-up charge. 
The bulk of the citizens were dispersed among the Latin 
colonies, or were sold into slavery. The city itself was 
spared, a signal instance, remarks Livy—is he speaking 
in irony or in earnest ?—of Roman clemency. But it was 
no longer to have citizens or any form of civic life. 


Hannibal never Beaten i?i Battle. 191 

Without magistrates, and without a senate, it was to re¬ 
ceive year by year a prefect from Rome, who should deal 
out Roman justice to such waifs and strays of population 
as might be drawn thither by the incomparable beauty oi 
the situation, or by the fertility of the soil. It was a 
warning also, Livy remarks—and here he is on safer 
ground—to any other city which had revolted, or might 
yet be disposed to revolt, of the amount of protection she 
might expect henceforward from Hannibal, and of the 
vengeance which would surely fall upon her from Rome. 

In vain did Hannibal endeavour by some brilliant 
stroke to counteract the fatal impression which the sur¬ 
render of Capua must produce on his 
Italian allies. An attempt to surprise Rhe- superiority 
gium failed, and all his efforts to capture ln the fieM ' 
the citadel of Tarentum failed also. Just now too Mar- 
cellus, his worthiest antagonist, returned from Sicily 
flushed with victory, and eager, so the Romans thought, 
at last to measure his sword with his ancient foe. Now 
also an alliance was formed by Rome with the brigands 
of ALtolia, which cut off Hannibal’s last hope that 
Philip of Macedon would ever be able to join him in 
Italy. Everything, in fact, seemed to betoken that the 
end was near; but those who thought so reckoned pre¬ 
maturely. In the year which followed the fall of Capua, 
the year b. C. 2to, Hannibal surprised and slew the 
Prmtor, Cn. Fulvius, before Herdonea. Herdonea it¬ 
self, which was meditating revolt, he burned to the 
ground after transferring its inhabitants to Metapontum 
and Thurii, two of the few towns which were still faith¬ 
ful to him. In b. C. 209, when Samnium and Lucania 
had already submitted to the Romans, and while one 
consul, Fulvius, was threatening Metapontum, and the 
other consul, Fabius was pressing the siege of Taren- 


192 


Rome and Carthage. 


Death of 
Marcellus. 


turn in his rear, he fought two brilliant actions in Apu¬ 
lia, which drove his third antagonist, the sword of Rome, 
himself, to take refuge in Venusia, and to adopt the 
more cautious tactics of its shield. 

In b. c. 208 and 207 his superiority in the field was as 
incontestable as ever. Tarentum, indeed, which it had 
cost him so much to win and so much to 
keep, had been betrayed by the commander 
of its garrison into the hands of the Ro¬ 
mans, and suffered the fate, or worse even than the fate, 
of Syracuse and Capua. All the Bruttians found within 
it were put to death ; thirty thousand of its Greek inhab¬ 
itants were sold as slaves, and all the works of art it 
contained, except its “ angry gods,’’ were carried off to 
Rome. Yet Hannibal encamped beneath its walls as 
though the place still belonged to him, and in vain of¬ 
fered battle to its new possessors. When he moved 
northwards into Apulia and found himself with his ever- 
diminishing force face to face with two consular armies, 
there he yet ventured to detach a flying squadron, which 
cut to pieces a Roman legion on a spot some fifty miles to 
his rear; and he held his own in the open field, waiting 
patiently till the moment should come for striking a 
blow. At last the moment came, and the blow which he 
struck was a heavy one. The consuls, Crispinus and 
Marcellus, as fate would have it, had left their camps, 
each with a small band of followers, and had ridden in 
company to the top of a wooded hill which lay between 
their two armies. They were observed by the Numidian 
cavalry, ready as ever for a surprise or a deed of da¬ 
ring. There was a sudden charge, and Crispinus 
wounded to the death, staggered back to his camp, while 
the body of the other consul, the bravest of the brave, 
was found by Hannibal himself where it had fallen. 


Latin Colonies Waver. 


J 93 


The Phoenician gazed on it for a while in silence, and 
then remarking, “ There lies a good soldier but a bad 
general,” ordered it to be honourably burned and the 
ashes to be sent to his son. 

But dangers greater even than the loss of Marcellus 
ivere now threatening the Romans. For in the year 209 
symptoms of exhaustion, if not of disaffec¬ 
tion had begun to show themselves even ofLatin 
within the bounds of the Confederation, c u lon ‘ es - 
amongst the Latin colonies themselves. Twelve of 
the thirty colonies, and those some of the oldest and 
the most important, in the most widely scattered parts 
of Italy, declared that the Romans must look for no 
more men and money from them, for they had neither 
men nor money to give. The news fell like a thunderbolt 
upon the consuls who were the first to hear it, and the 
Roman Senate knew that if the example spread all was 
lost; but they were prudent enough, or generous enough, 
to require no forced service. Accordingly, throwing 
themselves on the fidelity and devotion of the remaining 
eighteen, they prepared to face their redoubtable antag¬ 
onist with such help as they alone could give her. 


CHAPTER XV. 

BATTLE OF THE METAURUS. 

(207 B. C.) 

It seemed to augur ill for Rome that the stress of the 
war had at length begun to tell on the spirit and the 
fidelity of the Latin colonies themselves. 

_ , , , Approach of 

But, more ominous still, news reached the Hasdrubal 
city in B. C. 208 that after the vicissitudes of from Spain ’ 
the ten years’ struggle in Spain, Hasdrubal had at length 



i 9 4 


Ro?ne and Carthage. 


eluded Scipio, had entered Gaul by the passes of the 
Western Pyrenees, was raising fresh levies there, and 
early in the following summer might be expected in 
Italy. Rome had been in no such peril since the mor¬ 
row of the battle of Cannae ; for the approach of Has- 
drubal indicated that the great Spanish struggle, to 
support which Rome had sent out some of her best 
troops and generals, even when Hannibal was threaten¬ 
ing her existence, had at last been played out, and had 
ended in favour of Carthage. It seemed, indeed, that 
Carthage by conquering in Spain had assured her vic¬ 
tory in Italy also. For the last two years one son of 
Hamilcar had been overrunning Italy from end to end, 
and had more than once brought Rome to the brink of 
destruction ; and now with her resources diminished, her 
population halved, and her allies wavering, she had to 
face the onset of a second son of the same dreaded chief¬ 
tain, who would sweep down with new swarms of Gauls 
and Spaniards from the north, while his brother, for the 
last time, moved up for her destruction from his retreat 
in Bruttium in the south. A bitter comment this on the 
brilliant victory which Scipio was reported to have just 
won at Baecula in Spain! For Hasdrubal, his defeated 
adversary, was not penned, as he should have been, 
within the walls of Gades, but was collecting allies at 
his leisure in the heart of Gaul. 

A few precious months of winter remained to prepare 
for the double danger which the spring would bring. C. 

Claudius Nero, a man who had done fair 
Preparations service before Capua and in Spain, was one 

of Romans. 1 1 

of the consuls selected for the year of peril. 
His plebeian colleague, M. Livius, was one of the few 
Romans then living who had enjoyed a triumph; but 
his temper had been soured by an unjust charge of 


Hasdrubal in Italy. 


* 9 S 


peculation, and he was personally hostile to Nero. 
However, in the face of public danger, he was brought 
to forget his grievances and to act in concert with his 
colleague for the public good. Livius, so the Senate 
arranged, was to await the approach of Hasdrubal near 
the frontiers of Hither Gaul, while Nero was to impede, 
as best he could, the movements of Hannibal in the 
south. Seventy thousand Romans and as many allies 
were put into the field for this, the supreme effort, as it 
seemed, of the republic. 

As soon as the weather permitted, Hasdrubal started 
from Auvergne. Everything was in his favour. The 
mountaineers were friendly, the mountain 

r r i • Hasdrubal 

passes were free from snow, his army , n i ta i y> 
gathered strength and bulk as it advanced, 
and was in a more effective condition when it entered 
the plains of Italy than when it had crossed the 
Pyrenees. What a contrast to his brother’s advance 
ten years before ! Less prudent than his brother, how¬ 
ever, Hasdrubal sat down to besiege Placentia when he 
should have been pressing on towards his destination. 
When at last he moved forward, the Roman army 
retreated before him till it reached the small town of 
Sena to the south of the Metaurus. From this place 
Hasdrubal sent messengers who were to bid Hannibal 
meet him at Narnia, only some thirty miles from Rome. 
But Hannibal the messengers failed to find, and, falling 
into the hands of the Romans, their despatches were 
read not by the Carthaginian, but by the Roman 
general. Since the beginning of the campaign Hanni¬ 
bal had been rapidly shifting his quarters backwards 
and forwards between Bruttium and Apulia amidst a net¬ 
work of Roman fortresses and armies, always followed 
and never opposed by his vastly more numerous foe. 


196 


Rome and Carthage. 


The victories attributed by Livy and others to Nero dur¬ 
ing this period are purely fictitious, and are explicitly 
contradicted by Polybius himself. Hannibal, as fate 
would have it, must have gone southwards just before 
his brother’s messengers were despatched to find him. 
Had it been otherwise, they must have reached him in 
safety; and in that case we can hardly doubt that the 
brilliant march northward would have been not Nero’s 
but Hannibal’s, and that the Metaurus would have seen 
the collapse of the fortunes not of Carthage but of 
Rome. 

Nero formed a bold resolution—one almost without 
precedent at this period of Roman history—to desert 
the province and even a portion of the 
of^Nero troops confided to his keeping by the Sen¬ 
ate ; with the remainder to march rapidly 
northward, a distance of 200 miles, to join Livius, to 
crush Hasdrubal by a combined assault, and then to 
return again before Hannibal should have discovered 
his absence. It was a bold step, but hardly bolder than 
the extremity of the danger required ; above all, it was 
justified by the event. Nero took care not to inform the 
Senate of what he proposed to do till he was already 
loing it, thus putting it in their power to co-operate with 
is later movements, but not giving them the chance of 
impeding the decisive blow. He had already sent 
messengers to the friendly cities near "his line of march 
bidding them help, as best they could, the progress of 
their deliverers. The 6,000 infantry ar.d the 1,000 
cavalry selected for the enterprise started, like the 10,000 
Greeks before them, in total ignorance of their desti¬ 
nation. They believed that they were about to surprise 
some petty Carthaginian garrison near at home in 
Lucania; and their enthusiasm, when the momentous 


Battle of the Metaurus. 


X97 


secret was communicated to them, was only equalled by 
that of the Italian provincials who thronged the roadside 
with provisions, vehicles, and beasts of burden, and ac¬ 
companied the army with their blessings and their 
prayers. The soldiers declined everything that was not 
necessary for their immediate support; and pausing, we 
are told, neither to eat nor to drink, hardly even to 
sleep, in a few days they neared the camp of the other 
consul. Nero entered it at night and distributed his 
wearied troops among the tents which were already 
occupied, so as to avoid exciting the suspicions of 
Hasdrubal till he should meet them in the field. But 
next morning the quick ear of the Carthaginian noticed 
that the trumpet sounded twice instead of once within 
the enemy’s camp, and when the Romans offered battle 
his quick eye rested with suspicion on the travel-stained 
troops and the draggled horses of a portion of the army. 
Concluding that the other consul had arrived and that 
his brother’s army must have been dispersed or annihi¬ 
lated, he remained within his camp throughout that day, 
and at nightfall began to retreat towards the friendly 
Gaul. He reached the Metaurus in safety, but here his 
guides played him false, and instead of crossing at once 
by the ford, he wandered hither and thither on the 
nearer side, vainly searching for it in the darkness. 

Morning light brought the Romans, and Hasdrubal 
had now no choice but to draw up his army where it 
was, with a rapid and dangerous river in 
his rear. The Spanish veterans, his main Battle of the 

r _ Metaurus. 

strength, he placed on the right, intending 
to lead them in person against Livius. The Ligurians, 
with the elephants in their front, formed the centre, 
while the Gauls, untrustworthy as ever—except when led 
by Hannibal—were drawn up on a hill to the left, whick. 


198 


Rome a?irf Carthage. 


by the mere advantage of position, they could hardly 
fail to hold against Nero. The Spaniards, under Has- 
drubal’s own eye, fought nobly and with every prospect 
of success, till Nero, unable to dislodge the Gauls, left 
them to themselves, and by a brilliant manoeuvre, pass¬ 
ing behind the whole length of the Roman army, fell at 
once on the Spanish flank and rear. Thus surrounded 
they were cut to pieces where they stood, and Hasdrubal 
after doing all that a general could do to save the for¬ 
tunes of the day, rushed into the midst of the enemy’s cav¬ 
alry, and died as became the son of Hamilcar and the bro¬ 
ther of Hannibal. The greater part of the elephants, when 
they became unmanageable, were killed by their own 
drivers, who were furnished with weapons for the purpose, 
and who knew how and where to strike the fatal blow. 
The Gauls were slaughtered as they lay on the ground, 
heavy with wine or wearied out by their night’s march. 

The victory of Rome was not bloodless but it was 
complete. Hasdrubal’s army, whatever its size was 
annihilated, and some of the Roman an- 
of a Nero Sm nalists, regardless alike of truth and pro¬ 
bability, strove to make out that the 
slaughter of Metaurus equalled that of Cannae. From the 
agonies of suspense the Romans passed at once into the 
exuberant enthusiasm of victory. They had been rudely 
awakened to the consciousness that there were two Han- 
nibals in Italy. They forgot now that there was still one. 
That the Hannibal was still in Italy, still unconquered, 
and, as far as they knew, unconquerable. A well-de¬ 
served triumph was granted the victorious generals. It 
was the first which the Sacred Way had seen ever since 
Hannibal had entered Italy, for it was the first time, by 
the confession of theRomans themselves, that victory had 
smiled on their arms. The consuls triumphed in com- 


Scipio in Spain. 


199 


mon; but Nero was the hero of the day. To him was due 
alike the strategy of the northward march—a mar h per¬ 
haps only equalled in history by the advance of Marl¬ 
borough from Belgium to the Danube in the campaign 
of Blenheim—and the brilliant stroke which decided the 
battle. To Nero, however, also belongs the act of revolt¬ 
ing barbarism which wound up his achievements and 
must for ever detract from his fair fame. Returning 
to his army in Apulia as quickly as he had left it, he 
carried with him the head of Hasdrubal which he had 
caused to be severed from his body, and, with true 
Roman brutality ordered this ghastly trophy of victory 
to be flung into the camp of Hannibal, who, it is said, 
was still ignorant that the general opposed to him had 
ever left his quarters. Hannibal recognised the fea¬ 
tures of the brother whom he had so long and eagerly 
expected, and in them sadly saw the doom of Car¬ 
thage. 


CHAPTER XVI. 

P. CORNELIUS SCIPIO. 

(210-206 B.C.) 

It is necessary, now that we have reached this, the de¬ 
cisive point of the war, to direct our attention once 
more to Spain ; for it was on the Metaurus that Spain as 
well as Italy was lost to the Carthaginians, 
and it was in Spain, at this very time, that, Scipio in 
moving in an atmosphere of mingled war 
and love, amidst romantic expeditions and hair-breadth 
escapes, fortunate in what he did, and perhaps more 
fortunate in what he failed to do, surrounded by devoted 
friends like Lselius, or by court annalists, who saw all 
his doings through the bright halo which he or they 



200 


Rome and Carthage. 


diffused around them, the young general was being 
nursed by Fortune into fame who was soon to drive the 
Carthaginians from Spain, then, without striking a blow, 
was to compel Hannibal to withdraw from Italy, was 
next to crush that greatest of all heroes in Africa, and, 
finally, to bring to a conclusion there the long agony of 
the Second Punic War. P. Cornelius Scipio is one of 
the central figures of Roman history. His presence and 
his bearing exercised a strange fascination over all who 
came within its influence, and his name, with the ro¬ 
mances that began to cluster round it even in his life¬ 
time, was a yet more living power with posterity. It 
turned the head of even the sober-minded Polybius, and 
has given an air of unreality and of poetry to such 
fragments of his history of this portion of the war as 
have, unfortunately, alone come down to us. Let us pause 
for a while on the antecedents and the surroundings, the 
virtues and the failings, of so important and conspicu¬ 
ous a personage. 

Scipio was the son of that Publius who, by an un¬ 
looked-for reverse of fortune, had just been defeated 
and killed in the field of his numerous vic¬ 
tories and in the full tide of his success. 
But Fortune, so capricious towards the 
father, was unswerving in her devotion to the son. He 
was then only twenty-four years of age; but, young as 
he was, he was already known to fame by his conduct 
on three critical occasions. As a mere stripling of sev- . 
enteen he had saved, or it was believed that he had/ 
saved, his father’s life at the battle of Ticinus at the risk 
of his own ; after Cannae it was his resolute bearing 
which had shamed or frightened the recreant nobles of J 
Rome from deserting the fast sinking ship of the state ; 
at the age of twenty-three he had been candidate for the 


His early 
history. 


Characteristics of Scifio. 


201 


curule aedileship, and when the magistrate objected that 
he was not yet of legal age, he replied that if all the 
Quirites wished to make him aedile he was old enough. 
It was a characteristic reply, a sample of that contempt 
for the forms of law, and that mingled respect and con¬ 
tempt for popular opinion, which marked his conduct 
on several occasions of his life, and goes some way to 
explain alike what he did and what he failed to do ; and 
now, when his father and uncle had fallen in Spain, 
and the comitia were being held for the election of some 
one to fill their place, and, as the story goes, peo¬ 
ple were looking anxiously one upon the other to see 
who would offer himself for a task wherein two Scipios 
had failed, it was the young Publius himself who, with 
mingled modesty and self-reliance, came forward, and 
was straightway chosen proconsul amidst the exclama¬ 
tions of all present. 

A second secret of Scipio’s influence was the popular 
belief, in part, at least, shared by himself, that he was 
the special favourite of the gods and inspired 
by them in all he did. Stories were in the Hl ! character 
air of his divine descent, and even of his 
miraculous birth, which he had too much prudence 
either to affirm or to contradict. Why should the fa¬ 
vourite of the gods refuse to avail himself of any help 
they offered him ? In the existence of the gods and in 
their special help to him Scipio doubtless implicitly be¬ 
lieved ; but the ostentatious secrecy of his visits to the 
Capitol before undertaking any work of importance 
must have been suggested by the credulity of the muh 
titude rather than his own. At all events, his interviews 
with Jupiter there never ended in any other way than a 
careful consideration of the circumstances of the case 
in the privacy of his own study would have been likely 


202 


Rome and Carthage. 


to suggest. He was not, therefore, as has sometimes 
been said, “ areal enthusiast," nor was his a “genuinely 
prophetic nature on the other hand, he was no mere 
vulgar impostor. He had enough of enthusiasm himself 
to evoke it towards himself in others, not enough to 
allow himself, under any circumstances, 'to be hurried 
away by it. One of the greatest of Roman heroes, he 
was himself only three parts a Roman. He was fond 
of literary men, and was himself not destitute of Greek 
culture ; a weakness which certainly could not be charged 
against any genuine Roman of the old school. By turns 
the hero and the enemy of the populace, he knew how 
to win yet how to despise, how to use yet sometimes 
how to abuse, popular favour. In Spain, with the air 
and the surroundings of a king, he had enough Roman 
feeling to reject the regal gewgaws and the regal title 
which the Spaniards pressed upon him; at Rome, after 
his victory at Zama, he showed that he still retained 
enough of the genuine republican spirit to refuse the 
invidious honours—the dictatorship for life and the 
statue in the Capitol—which the citizens in the ecstasy 
of their joy would fain have given him. But he had not 
that inborn.__rexerence--for- law and .for authority which 
had made the Romans what they were, and which would 
have bi dden hiitrcheerfU11 yTemainf in Italy, even when 
he knew he had it in him to finish the war in Africa, 
rather than resist the powers that be. A Roman of the 
old type would have submitted to an accusation or to a 
punishment which he knew to be unjust rather than 
involve himself in the semblance of illegality; but 
Scipio, when his brother Lucius was called to give an 
account of the moneys which he had received from King 
Antiochus, and was about to present to the Senate the 
document which would have cleared or condemned him, 



Charm > of Scipio. 


proudly snatched it from his hands and tore it to pieces 
before their eyes. So again, in his last appearance in 
public life, when it was his own turn to have his conduct 
called in question, he reminded his accusers, by a happy 
stroke of audacity which was akin to genius, that this 
was the day on which he had defeated Hannibal at 
Zama, and called upon them to follow him to the Capitol 
that they might there return thanks to the gods who had 
given them the victory, and pray that the Roman state 
might have other citizens like himself. The appeal was 
irresistible, and the Romans once more showed that 
they could not judge a Manlius in sight of the Capitol. 
These incidents have a grandeur peculiarly their own; 
but it is hardly a Roman grandeur. As a young man 
Scipio was fond of romantic situations, and fortune 
showered them upon him. The charms of his personal 
presence, and the moral and material victories which 
they won, his adventurous interviews with Spanish or 
Berber princes, or with hostile generals, his chivalrous 
treatment of captive maidens and their bridegrooms or 
their suitors, fill a large part in the histories which 
remain to us of his Spanish and his African campaigns. 
Much of the setting of these stories may be imaginary ; 
but the stories themselves doubtless rest on a substratum 
of fact, and they reveal to us, however dimly, a union of 
gallantry and generosity, of prudence and of passion, of 
sensibility to the charms of beauty, and yet of resistance 
to their power, wh ich enable us to feel something of the 
fasrination-whinh- made S cipio the idol of his soldiers,^ 
nf^-t ho natives of Spain and Africa, and of the'great 
body, and thosgThc more-generous,_&f his fellow-citizens. 
Above all, if Scipio had not all the most~characteristic 
Roman virtues, he was free from the worst Roman vices. 
He was not cruel, not faithless, not indifferent to human 








204 


Rome and Carthage. 


life; as times went, he was not self-seeking. He could 
appreciate virtue in an enemy, he could be generous to 
a fallen foe. He could observe the terms of a capitu¬ 
lation, he could suppress a mutiny without promiscuous 
massacre, and could sometimes take a town without 
slaughtering the inhabitants in cold blood. He could 
even enter into the peculiarities and characteristics of 
nations other than his own, and, unlike his younger 
namesake, could shrink from obliterating a seat of an¬ 
cient civilization and commerce at one fell blow. In 
fine, if he was not a worthy antagonist to Hannibal, he 
was the least unworthy that Rome, the nurse of heroes, 
could in this sixteen years’ war produce ; and if he was 
the favourite of Fortune, it must be admitted that that 
capricious goddess has seldom conferred her favours on 
one who did so much to deserve them. — 

Scipio crossed to Spain with 11,000 men towards the 
close of the year b.c. 210, and early in the spring of the 
following year he struck a blow which showed that a 
general of a new stamp had appeared upon the scene. 
Finding that the three Carthaginian generals, Hasdrubal 
and Mago, sons of Hamilcar, and Hasdrubal, son of 
Gisco, were passing the winter in widely different parts 
of Spain each more distant from New Carthage than he 
was himself, and hearing also that the garrison had been 
reduced to 1,000 men, he determined to make a rapid 
descent upon that city, the head-quarters of the Cartha¬ 
ginian government and the key to their position in Spain. 

New Carthage was a noble city situated on a land¬ 
locked harbour, the only good harbour on the south-east 
„ „ coast of Spain. It was surrounded on all 

Capture of 

New Car- sides by water, save where an isthmus onb 
250 yards wide connected it with the main¬ 
land. Its fortifications, strong everywhere, were doubly 


Capture of New Carthage. 


205 


strong here ; but there was one weak spot which fortune 
or the gods were preparing to reveal to their favourite. 
The object of the enterprise was entrusted to Laelius, 
Scipio’s lifelong friend, alone ; and it was arranged that 
he should enter the harbour with the fleet just when 
Scipio with his land force appeared before its walls. Not 
a whisper of what was coming reached the city till it was 
already come; and not a misadventure or a hitch oc¬ 
curred from the moment when the adventurous Scipio 
left Tarraco to the time when New Carthage was in his 
power. The assault indeed of the Romans on the forti¬ 
fications of the isthmus was repelled ; but Scipio intend¬ 
ed it to be so, for it was not the real point of his attack. 
Taking advantage of the ebb tide which left the waters 
of the lagoon on the western side so low that they could 
easily be forded—a fact known to few but himself—and, 
by a happy inspiration, bidding his soldiers follow him 
boldly where Neptune himself pointed out the way, 
Scipio led a select body of his troops to the attack, 
through waters which besiegers and besieged might well 
have thought would submerge them all. The walls here 
proved to be accessible, and they were quite undefended. 
The attention of the garrison had been called elsewhere, 
and with the help of scaling ladders and the god of the 
sea the small band soon found themselves masters of 
New Carthage. New Carthage—with its mines of gold 
and silver, its arsenal and its dockyards, its merchant 
vessels and its stores of corn, its stands of arms and its 
engines of war, its skilled workmen and its hostages 
drawn by the suspicious Carthaginians from all the 
Spanish tribes—all belonged to Rome. The work of 
slaughter over—and terrible work it was—Scipio ad¬ 
dressed himself to the distribution of the booty. If the 
stories that have come down to us may be trusted, the 

p 


206 


Rome and Carthage. 



, survivo rs-&£- t h c mas saere -h nd re aso n tn ad m-mM-h-p-shill 
with which their conqueror managed to turn foes into 
—frien ds, an cLsOr-a-s it tv ^ertrri' iTT tl nr - fe atthagc against her- 
Self. Under promise of their freedom the Punic ship¬ 
wrights cheerfully transferred their services to Rome. 
Captive princesses, who might have been given up to 
the Roman soldiery, or reserved by the young general 
for himself, were restored to their parents or their be¬ 
trothed lovers ; and the hostages, those standing monu¬ 
ments of Carthaginian mistrust, were dismissed to their 
homes and converted into so many pledges of Roman 
moderation and good will. 

It seemed once more as if the Spanish war was over; 
and Laelius was dispatched to Rome to report to the 
Senate, perhaps to magnify, the achieve- 
ginlans" ments of his friend. We are surprised in- 

dnven ° ut deed, after so brilliant a beginning- to find 
that the young general, instead of pressing 
on at once to Gades, fell back on Tarraco whence he 
had started, and that Hasdrubal, after he had been con¬ 
quered by him in a decisive battle at Btecula, was yet 
able, as has been already related, to give him the slip 
and to go off with a considerable force to Italy, thus to 
all appearance accomplishing the object of the long 
Spanish struggle. It was not till Hasdrubal had spent 
the winter months in Gaul, had invaded Italy, and had 
fallen on the Metaurus, that Scipio ventured to advance 
into Bmtica, and then, step by step, after a decisive vic¬ 
tory at Elinga or Silpia, drove the Carthaginians into 
Gades, “their first and their last possession ” in Spain. 
Nor was it till the year B. c. 205 that Mago, the last of 
the brood of Hamilcar, passed over into the Balearic 
Islands, leaving to Rome, or rather to two centuries of 
half-suppressed revolts against her cruel and treacherous 








Scipio Elected Consul. 


207 


rule, the empire which his family had founded and built 
up, and of which they had so long postponed the fall. 


CHAPTER XVII. 

THE WAR IN AFRICA. BATTLE OF ZAMA. 

(206-202 B.C.) 

On his return to Rome towards the close of the year b. c. 
206, Scipio enumerated to the Senate, which had been 
assembled for that purpose in the Temple of 
Bellona outside the walls the long roll of s 9'P io e|e «- 
the actions which he had fought, the towns 
which he had taken, and the cities which he had sub¬ 
dued. Not a Carthaginian, he proudly told them, was 
left alive in Spain. He expected to receive a triumph; 
and, truly, in view of his successes, if not of his intrinsic 
merits, he deserved it as few Roman generals had done 
before him. But the Senate, half envious and half dis¬ 
trustful of the young general, determined to abide by 
precedent where, as in this case, precedent fell in with 
their own inclinations; and refused an honour which 
had never yet been granted except to a regularly com¬ 
missioned officer of the state. Scipio, who had con¬ 
quered as a mere proconsul, could console himself only 
with the conquests he had yet in view, when perhaps 
there might be no such artificial obstacle to the reward 
which they merited. He had not long to wait; for at 
the Comitia, to which the people flocked as much to 
see as to vote for the conqueror of Spain, he was unani¬ 
mously chosen Consul—though he had not yet filled the 
office of Praetor, and was still only thirty years of age— 
and with the purpose clearly understood, even if it was 



Rom ' and Carthage. 


not expressed in words, that he should transfer the war 
to Africa. 

But the fathers of the city were full of misgivings. 
They remembered Regulus. They reflected that Han¬ 
nibal was still in Italy, that there might be 
Proposes to life in the old lion yet, and that even in his 

invade Atrica. J 

death-grapple, he might, like the blind and 
captive Samson, slay and scatter his foes once more as 
he had done scores of times in the heyday of his 
strength. The old Fabius, true to his policy to the end, 
advised Scipio to reckon with Hannibal and his few sol¬ 
diers in Italy rather than attempt to draw him off to 
Africa, where he would have the whole power of Car¬ 
thage at his back. But Scipio showed clearly enough 
that, if the Senate refused the leave he sought, he would 
seek it from the people ; and if he failed to get it from 
them, he would still take it for himself. The Senate, 
therefore, were glad to save their dignity and to shift a 
portion of their responsibility from their own shoulders, 
by assigning the province of Sicily to the newly elected 
consul, at the same time giving him permission to cross 
thence into Africa, “ if he should judge it to be advan¬ 
tageous to the state.” They declined, however, to vote 
him a sufficient army, and would hardly even allow him 
to accept the services of those who came to him as vol¬ 
unteers. The army assigned to him consisted of but 
two legio nsjand those the t wo w.hirTr~1iarl. a rsnTrprl ttw* 
defeat at Cannae, and which had been kept on duty in 
Sicily, as in a kind ofpenal settlement, ever since. But 
"the warlike iraliutis uf Italy - supplied him vvith seven 
thousand trusty volunteers ; and the Etruscans, those 
ancient mariners of the Italian waters, eagerly furnished 
him with the rough materials for a fleet. Once more the 
fairy tale of the First Punic War is repeated in honour 









Scipio in Sicily. 


209 


of the favourite of the gods, and a growing wood was 
transformed in forty-five days into a fleet of ten quadri- 
remes and twenty quinqueremes. 

With this meagre provision for what he was medita¬ 
ting, Scipio landed in his province. There he furnished 
three hundred of his army with horses 

which he had taken from the Sicilians ; a Scipio ln 

Sicily. 

delicate operation, but so adroitly man¬ 
aged that we are asked to believe that the despoiled pro¬ 
vincials, instead of resenting it as an injury, thanked 
him as for a benefit. Discharged veterans of the army 
of Marcellus came and enrolled themselves amongst his 
followers, and supplies of provisions came flowing in 
from all the corn-growing lands of Sicily. The ships 
which he knew to be seaworthy he sent under the com¬ 
mand of Laelius to devastate the African coast; those 
which were newly built he laid up for the winter in dry 
docks at Panorinus, that their unseasoned timbers might 
warp or leak in a place where a warp or a leak would 
not be fatal to them. He then went into winter quarters 
in the pleasant town—-too pleasant his critics at Rome 
deemed it—of Syracuse. But the inactivity which was 
thus forced or seemed to be forced upon him in his own 
province he turned to good account by the blow he man¬ 
aged to strike in the province of his colleague. He 
threw a small force across the straits of Messana, and 
by an arrangement with a party within the town, he 
got possession of Locri, an important place near the 
southernmost point of Italy. Hannibal thus found him¬ 
self deprived for the moment of his base of operations in 
Bruttium. But the gain was a doubtful one for the 
reputation alike of Scipio and of Rome; for the capture 
of the town was followed by a series of terrible atrocities 
which Scipio, if he did not actually authorize them, took 


210 


Rome and Carthage. 


no measures either to prevent or adequately to punish, 
and which reflected seriously on the state in whose 
service the worst offenders were. 

Early in 204 B. c., the armament which Scipio had 
collected in face of the lukewarmness or the opposition 
of the Senate sailed, amidst all the pomp 
vades°Africa. and circumstance of war, from Lilybseum, 
that ancient stronghold of the Phoenician 
race. Accounts differ as to its size. Some of our au¬ 
thorities—they can perhaps in this instance hardly be 
called authorities at all—place the number of men on 
board as low as 12,000, while others make it as high as 
36,000. But' if we take the higher, and perhaps the 
more likely estimate, we still cannot fail to observe how 
vastly inferior in numbers this expedition was to those 
which were again and again despatched against Car¬ 
thage, or her maritime dependencies, in the course of 
the First Punic War. Even if the Senate had taken up 
the project warmly, as a more far-sighted body would 
probably have done, the waste of life and property oc¬ 
casioned by Hannibal’s fourteen years’ war in Italy 
must have made any armament which they were able 
to raise look small in comparison with that of Regulus ; 
and we are surprised to find that the Carthaginians, who 
still claimed, in a measure, the empire of the seas, who 
knew what an invasion of Africa meant, and who had 
long seen that it was coming, yet offered no opposition 
by their fleet to Scipio’s approach. The small force that 
was for ever to deprive Carthage of her proudest title, 
and to make her a mere dependency of Rome, landed 
on the third day, without seeing a vestige of the foe, 
near the “Fair Promontory;’’ and Scipio, according to 
his wont, drew a not ill-grounded omen of success from 
the name of the spot to which the gods, or his own care- 


Massinissa and Syphax. 


21 i 


fully considered plans, had guided him. Fortune, how¬ 
ever, did not smile on his first attempt. Already while 
in Spain he had prepared the way for his invasion of 
Africa by opening friendly communications with the two 
Numidian chieftains from whom, in such a contingency, 
he might have most to hope or fear. These two chief¬ 
tains were Massinissa, head of the Massylians, a tribe 
which dwelt immediately to the westward of the domain 
of Carthage, and Syphax, who ruled the Massaesylians, 
a much more important tribe, occupying the region of 
the modern Algeria. Before we enter on those final 
operations of the war in which they play so important a 
part, it is necessary to give a brief account of the antece¬ 
dents of each of these barbarian princes. 

Massinissa had, during many years, fought against 
the Romans in the Spanish war, and had done good 
service to Carthage; but, even there, seeing 
which way fortune was turning, he had, with and Syphax. 
the astute fickleness of a barbarian, come 
to a secret understanding with Scipio. Syphax was also 
bound by treaty to Carthage. But it was a treaty which 
the Carthaginians well knew that he would break as 
soon as he should deem it to his advantage to do so ; 
and Scipio flattered himself that by a romantic visit, 
which, amidst great dangers, he had paid to his court 
in the midst of the Spanish war, he had secured alike the 
support of the Berber chieftain and the admiration of 
Hasdrubal, his Carthaginian antagonist. It was by a 
strange coincidence indeed that the rival generals, un¬ 
known to each other, had abandoned their respective 
armies in Spain, and, crossing over into Africa, had met 
with antagonistic objects, but in no unfriendly inter¬ 
course, at the court of an African prince. Fascinated 
by Scipio’s address and bearing, Syphax readily pro- 


212 


Rome and Carthage. 


mised the alliance which he asked. But the surpassing 
beauty of Sophonisba, the daughter of his other guest, 
made a more permanent impression on the amorous 
barbarian ; and on the promise of a marriage with her, 
Syphax was induced to throw up his newly formed 
friendship with Rome, and to renew his old one with 
Carthage. He forthwith drove his nephew Massinissa 
out of his hereditary kingdom ; and when that chieftain, 
after innumerable adventures and escapes, now pre¬ 
sented himself in Scipio’s camp near the Fair Promon¬ 
tory, it was only as an outlaw at the head of a few 
horsemen, whose aid might cost the Romans more than 
it was worth. This was a keen disappointment to 
Scipio, and, so far, seemed to augur ill for his African 
campaign. 

It might have been expected that in this, the last 
period of the war, waged as it was almost under the 
walls of'Carthage, some clear rays of light would have 
been thrown on the internal state of the city itself. But 
in this, as in other parts of the long struggle, we look in 
vain for such a clear and truthful narrative of events as 
would have enabled us to picture to ourselves the won¬ 
derful city from which Hannibal, one of the greatest 
wonders of all times, came. Here, if anywhere, and 
now, if anywhen, we might have expected that the Ro¬ 
mans would have taken the pains to explain to them¬ 
selves, if not to others, the condition and the constitu¬ 
tion, the fears and the hopes, the strength and the weak¬ 
ness of that great city which had so long contended with 
them on equal or even superior terms. What a price¬ 
less boon, for instance, would Scipio himself, with that 
taste for literature with which the unlettered Roman 
senators twitted him, and with his power of understand¬ 
ing, or at least of influencing, nations less civilized than 


Historical Possibilities. 


21 3 


his own, have conferred on all future times, had he 
cared to tell us exactly what he saw, and what he in¬ 
ferred, about his great antagonists ! The facts of these 
last few years cannot, we should think, have been less 
instructive, less thrilling, or less strange, than those fic¬ 
tions in which the Scipionic circle appear habitually to 
have indulged. The glory of Rome would not have les¬ 
sened, it might even have been increased, had she given 
her adversaries, now at any rate, that credit which was 
their due. We might then have been able to judge, on 
better grounds than those on which most historians have 
passed so ready and so easy a judgment, as to what ele¬ 
ments of civilization and of progress, along with those 
other elements of weakness, which are admitted on all 
hands, Carthage might have transported into Europe, 
had the result of the war been different. We should 
then have had more data for determining the question, as 
to what would have been the gain and what the loss to 
the world at large had the Mediterranean continued, 
what Nature seems to have intended it to be, the high¬ 
way of independent nations, each perhaps endeavour¬ 
ing, but, happily, each failing, to conquer its neigh¬ 
bours ; instead of becoming a Roman lake, connecting 
nations whose separate existence had been stamped out 
of them, and all of them controlled, assimilated, civil¬ 
ized—if we like to call it so—by the all-levelling power 
of Rome. 

The services rendered to civilization by Rome are 
clear enough; but is not so clear what services might 
hereafter have been rendered to it by a free Athens and 
a free Corinth, by the inexhaustible energy of the Greek 
colonies in Sicily, by a possibly resuscitated Tyre or by 
the new-born Alexandria ; last, not least, by a Carthage 
freed, as Hannibal was able for a short time at least to 


214 


Rome and Carthage. 


free it from its narrow oligarchy, and by a Rome which 
would have been content with her natural boundaries, 
content, that is, to assimilate, and to weld into one, the 
various tribes which were most of them cognate to her¬ 
self, from the straits of Messana to the Alps. He is 
certainly a bold historian who with these—so large a 
part of the conditions of the problem—not before him, 
will pronounce dogmatically that it was in all respects 
well for the world that Rome was able utterly to destroy 
her ancient rival. The phrase, “ it would have been,” is 
a dangerous phrase to use in the study of history. It is 
difficult to avoid using it altogether; but it must always 
be remembered on what slender grounds we can use it at 
all, and how infinite are the possibilities of which no 
account is taken. If it be presumptuous to say, as 
Napoleon did, that God is always on the side of the big 
battalions, it is hardly less presumptuous to say dog¬ 
matically that in this or that instance He was on the side 
of the weaker ones. It surely savours of presumption 
to maintain, as one historian, never to be mentioned 
without high honour, has, throughout this portion of his 
noble history, maintained, that Providence must surely 
have been plotting against Carthage, and watching over 
Rome, because when Hannibal advanced on the city, 
two legions which had been raised for the Spanish war 
happened to be still lingering there and could be utilized 
for her defence; or again, because the great Cartha¬ 
ginian happened to have turned southwards to Brut- 
tium instead of northwards to Lucania, at the moment 
when the messengers of his long-looked-for brother 
were despatched to find him. We know all too little of 
the nation which produced Hamilcar, Barca, and Han¬ 
nibal to say what that nation might have done in 
happier times under the guidance of such commanding 


Campaign in Africa. 


215 


geniuses. The Second Punic War ends as it was begun. 
It is recorded from first to last only by Hannibal’s 
enemies, who neither understood, nor cared to under¬ 
stand, what made him, and what made his city, great. 
Yet it is the old story. It is the man who paints the 
prostrate lion. But it is the lion, and not the man ; it is 
Hannibal, and not his conquerors, who, in spite of the 
painter’s intention, rivets all eyes and stands forth alone 
from the canvas, alike in his military genius and in his 
patriotism, in his hundred victories and in his one 
defeat, without a parallel in history. 

But the Carthaginians were not more ready to meet 
Scipio by land than they had been by sea. They were 
without a sufficient army, and Hasdrubal, 
the son of Cisco, their best available gene- The campaign 
ral was just then at a distance. For nearly 
fifty years Africa had been free from invasion ; and the 
soldiers of Scipio found the same unwalled towns and 
villages and the same fruitful and well-watered estates 
which the followers of Agathocles and Regulus had 
found before them. From this rich and prosperous 
country a motley and panic-stricken multitude flocked 
towards Carthage, driving their flocks and herds before 
them ; and the gates of the capital were shut and the 
walls manned, as though for an immediate attack. 
Pressing messages for aid were sent to Hasdrubal and 
Syphax ; and the sense of relief was great when Scipio, 
instead of advancing on the capital, showed that he 
intended first to secure Utica. Frequent skirmishes with 
the Numidian cavalry took place, in which Massinissa, 
availing himself to the utmost of his knowledge of the 
Numidian tactics, did good service to the Romans. The 
ships which Scipio had sent back to Sicily, returned 
laden with provisions and with his siege train; but 


2 l6 


Rome and Carthage. 


command 

prolonged. 


for forty days the oldest Phoenician colony in Africa 
resisted, with true Phoenician endurance, all his asaults. 
Two large armies under Hasdrubal and Syphax ad¬ 
vanced to its relief, and on the approach of winter Scipio 
was obliged, without having won any decisive success, to 
abandon the blockade, and to transfer his camp to an 
adjoining tongue of land, which was known for centuries 
afterwards as the Castra Cornelia. 

So ended the year 204. Neither the hopes nor the 
fears which Scipio’s invasion of Africa had called forth 
Scipio’s had as yet been fulfilled ; and so far did the 

war still seem from its termination, that the 
Italians were not yet able to look upon them¬ 
selves as secure from invasion. They even thought it 
prudent to build ships for the special purpose of protect¬ 
ing their coasts from possible attacks on the part of the 
Carthaginian navy. Twenty legions were put into the 
field for the year 203, and the command of Scipio was 
prolonged, not, as on previous occasions, for a fixed 
period, but till such time as the war should be brought 
to a conclusion. From the military point of view this 
was a step in the right direction. It had already been 
tried in Spain in the persons of two members of the same 
illustrious family; but it was also the first step towards 
the establishment of the military dictatorship, which was 
destined, after a long agony of civil wars, to overthrow 
the liberties of Rome. 

Fortune or fraud soon gave Scipio the chance of deal¬ 
ing a decisive blow. In sight of his winter quarters was 
the camp of the Carthaginians, under Has- 
Cariha? ° f drubal, son of Gisco, and at some distance 
g inian farther lav that of the Numidians under Sy- 

camps. . 

phax. The Carthaginian huts were built of 
dry wood which had been collected from the fields, while 


Story of Sophonisba. 


217 


those of the Numidians, as their custom was, were made 
of wattled reeds thatched with straw. Such materials 
suggested to Scipio the way in which they might best be 
destroyed. Opening or pretending to open negotiations 
for peace, he sent messengers backwards and forwards 
with orders to note the shape and the arrangements, the 
exits and the entrances, of the hostile camps. This 
information obtained, he suddenly broke off the negotia¬ 
tions, and then, with an easy conscience as it would 
seem, set out on his night errand. The wily Numidian 
chief was told off to the task which seemed appropriate 
to him, and which he had perhaps been the first to sug¬ 
gest, the burning of the Numidian camp. The flames 
spread with the rapidity of lightning, and when the 
Carthaginians hastened to the help of their allies, their 
own camp was set on fire by Scipio behind them. The 
panic was sudden and universal, and what the flames 
spared, the swords of the Romans, who had been sta¬ 
tioned at all the outlets, cut down. Forty thousand 
Africans fell the victims of this not very glorious exploit. 
It was with difficulty that the two generals, Hasdrubal 
and Syphax, escaped, the one to Carthage, to keep alive 
the spirit of the “ Barcine faction ” against the faint¬ 
hearted counsels of the peace-party, which now, perhaps 
with reason, might make themselves heard; the other, 
to rally the survivors of the slaughter, and to collect new 
forces for the defence of the capital. 

Another victory of Scipio followed in the so-called 
“ Great Plains,” and on the exiled Massinissa was im¬ 
posed the congenial task of following up his 
rival Syphax, who had deprived him of his s,phonlsba ‘ 
hereditary kingdom. Massinissa's pursuit was as rapid 
as it was successful. The Massaesylians were defeated, 
and Syphax himself, together with his beautiful wife 


2 l8 


Rome a fid Carthage. 


Sophonisba, and his capital, Cirta (the modern Cons'tan' 
tine), which had been built in the most romantic and 
impregnable of situations, fell into the conqueror’s hands. 
In times long gone by, so the story went, Massinissa’s 
heart had been touched by the charms of the Carthagi¬ 
nian maiden. Fortune had then thrown her into the 
hands of his rival, but now his own turn was come. He 
married her on the spot, and when Scipio, alive to the 
complications which might follow from such a marriage, 
and perhaps jealous of his own superior rights, bade 
him dismiss a wife who might compromise his fidelity to 
the Romans, he sent her a cup of poison, “ the only 
present which the bridegroom could offer to his bride.” 
Let her see to it that she did nothing unworthy of the 
daughter of a Carthaginian general and the wife of two 
Numidian kings. Sophonisba drank off the poison, only 
remarking that her death would have been more oppor¬ 
tune had it not followed so immediately upon her mar¬ 
riage. Massinissa, so the chroniclers rounded off the 
tragic story, was gently rebuked by his Roman Mentor 
for having atoned for one rash act by another ; but he 
was consoled for the loss of his bride by the royal title, 
and by the Roman garments which Scipio solemnly be¬ 
stowed upon him. 

It was an honour never before granted by the proud 
republic to one who was not a Roman citizen ; but Mas- 

b t sinissa lived long enough abundantly to jus- 
history of tify his privileges. What Hiero had been to 
Massmissa. t ^ e R omans throughout the First Punic War 
and during the early years of the Second, that Massinissa 
was to them during its closing years, throughout the long 
agony of the peace which followed it, and in the short 
and sharp struggle of the Third. When the “War of 
Hannibal’’ was over, Massinissa was planted, as we 


Negotiations for Peace. 


219 


shall hereafter see, by the Romans as a thorn in the side 
of the city with which they professed to have made 
peace. He was encouraged to make aggressions on her 
mutilated territory, and then to complain to the Romans 
if she ventured to defend herself. Carthage was xhe 
lamb in the fable. Whatever excesses she might allege, 
or whatever the provocation or the injury she might re¬ 
ceive, she knew that the-case was prejudged against her 
by the wolf, and that she must meet the lamb's fate. 

The fall of Syphax was a great blow to Carthage. 
Her most powerful friend was gone, and his place was 
taken by her deadliest foe. Indeed the whole 
power of Numidia was now arrayed against Negotiations 

J # 0 for peace. 

her. In spite of a naval success obtained by 
the Carthaginians over Scipio’s fleet, and the consequent 
raising of the siege of Utica, the peace party now came 
to the front at Carthage. The able Hasdrubal, the son 
of Gisco, they condemned to death in his absence—a 
sentence passed, ostensibly, no doubt, as a punishment 
for his recent failure, but really, as seems probable, for 
his previous energy ; and they then opened negotiations 
for peace with Scipio. The terms offered by him were 
lenient; more lenient, as has been already pointed out, 
than those offered by Regulus fifty years before. He 
knew that there was a strong party opposed to him at 
Rome, and he knew also that an army which had failed 
• to reduce Utica would not be likely to capture Carthage 
by a coup-dc-mam. Ambassadors were sent to Rome 
to get the terms to which both parties had agreed in 
Africa confirmed by the Roman Senate; and if Livy 
may be believed—and he is to a certain extent borne 
out by what we know of the state of parties at Carthage 
—those who were now in power had the baseness as 
well as the folly to try to throw the blame of the war on 


220 


Rome and Carthage. 


Hannibal. Anyhow the proposals were summarily re¬ 
jected, the ambassadors were dismissed without an 
answer, and Scipio was instructed to press the war to its 
natural conclusion. 

But for Carthage one chance still remained. The 

sons of Hamilcar might be recalled to help in the hour 

of her extremity the state which had done 

Last chance s0 iittl e to help them, and which now, by 
of Carthage. A .... 

the mouths of one party within it, professed 
to be ashamed of having done even that little. And 
whether it was the work of the peace party, in the hope 
that peace might thereby be made more possible, or of 
the war party, who hoped that Hannibal, the genius of 
war, might yet strike a blow which would reverse its for¬ 
tunes, the order was sent to the two sons of Hamilcar to 
return to Africa (203 B. C.). 

Driven out of Spain by Scipio, Mago, as we have 
seen, had crossed to the Balearic Islands, and passing 
thence from the harbour which still bears 
Recall of his name, Port Mahon, into Northern Italy, 

Mago. # J 

had taken Genoa, and during the last two 
years had been labouring to organize among the unsub¬ 
dued and ever-savage Ligurians an active coalition 
against Rome. But it was too late. In the territory of 
the Insubrian Gauls, he at last measured his sword with 
the Romans. The battle was well contested, but it was 
decisive; and Mago, who had received a dangerous • 
wound in his thigh, staggered back by night, as best he 
could, through that rugged country, to the seacoast. 
Here he found the message of recall awaiting him. He 
set sail at once, as became a true son of Hamilcar ; but 
worn out with anxiety of mind and with agony of body, 
he died, perhaps happily for himself, before he hove in 
sight of the African shore. 


Recall of Hannibal. 


221 


A different, but hardly a less tragic fate awaited his 
elder and more famous brother. For four years past, 
ever since the battle of Metaurus had shown 
Hannibal hi m ^ lat u lt* mate success was not to be 
looked for, Hannibal had been compelled 
to act simply on the defensive. With his sadly thinned 
army of veterans, and his Campanian and Bruttian re¬ 
cruits, he had withdrawn into the neck of land to the 
south of Italy which seemed as if it had been made for 
his purpose. If it prepared the way for his future 
retreat to Africa, it was Italy still, and it still for four 
years enabled him to keep his vow, and to make Rome 
uneasy. He had withdrawn to the “ Land’s End,” but 
he lay there with his face to the foe, gathering up his 
strength, and ever ready to spring upon anyone who 
should venture to molest him. The Roman vultures 
gathered indeed around the dying lion ; but each, as in 
the heyday of his strength, demurred to being the first 
to approach him. Invincible as ever in the field—for 
Polybius tells us expressly that he was “ never beaten in 
a battle so long as he remained in Italy”—Hannibal 
had been condemned to see province after province, and 
fortress after fortress—Consentia and Metapontum, 
Locri and Pandosia—torn from him, till at last there 
was nothing left in Italy but the southern corner of 
Bruttium and the one fortress of Croton which he could 
call his own. Yet all this time, when he must have been 
in sore want of provisions, when reinforcements from 
Carthage were no longer to be thought of, when it be¬ 
came more and more clear that no help could be ex¬ 
pected from Philip of Macedon, or from his own heroic 
brother Mago; when he had already seen the result of 
the war registered in the ghastly head of his other brother 
Hasdrubal, there had been no thought of surrender and 
Q 


222 


Rome and Carthage. 


no whisper of mutiny in his camp. Without hope, but 
without fear, he had held on there in his solitary 
strength; and now when the order came to leave the 
land of his fifteen years’ struggle and of his astonishing 
victories, he, like his father and like his brother, mas¬ 
tered his feelings and obeyed. 

“ Leaving the country of his enemies with more re¬ 
gret,” says Livy, “ than many an exile has left his own,” 
Hannibal made for the smaller Leptis, a place far to the 
southeast of Carthage. The news of his 
lands in arrival there at once brought back the war 

Africa. party in the capital to power. Some Ro¬ 

man transports which had been driven ashore in a 
storm were seized by the excited populace, and hostili¬ 
ties broke out amidst homilies on the part of the Ro¬ 
mans against Carthaginian ill-faith, which, owing to the 
circumstances under which they have come down to us, 
we can neither refute nor believe. The Romans knew 
well that the scourge which had been withdrawn from 
themselves in Italy would fall with redoubled vigour on 
their countrymen in Africa, and it is all the more to be 
wondered at that they did not think it worth while to 
leave to posterity a trustworthy account of the steps 
which led up to the final catastrophe. Hannibal passed 
the winter at Adrumetum, the modern Susa, a town 
nearer to Carthage than Leptis, but still considerably to 
the southeast of it, and then, instead of advancing on 
the capital—which he must have yearned to visit, for he 
had not seen it since he was nine years old—he struck 
across the southern part of the Carthaginian dominions 
into Numidia. There he won some successes over 
Massinissa, he formed an alliance with some Numidian 
chiefs, and there finally he met or was overtaken by 
Scipio, who had moved forward from his head-quarters 
at Tunis, plundering and enslaving as he went. 


Hannibal lands in Africa. 


223 


After an abortive negotiation for peace, in the year b.c. 
202, and probably in the month of October, but on a day 
and at a place, which, strange to say, are 
unknown, the two great generals met for the Battle ° f 
first and last time in the battle which was to 
decide for centuries the fate of the civilized world. The 
battle of Zama, like many other battles in history— 
Arbela, Hastings, and Blenheim—was fought at some 
distance from the place whose name has been united 
with it. The battle-field lay probably much to the west 
of Zama, near the upper Bagradas, and not far from a 
town called by Livy Naraggara. Hannibal drew up his 
army in three lines. In the first were his Ligurian, Gal¬ 
lic, and Moorish mercenaries and the slingers from the 
Balearic Isles. In the second stood the native Cartha¬ 
ginians and their African subjects, with some troops 
which had recently arrived from Macedon. In the third 
line were drawn up the tried soldiers of Hannibal’s own 
army, on whom, if on no others, he could rely. These 
last consisted chiefly of Bruttians. The sixteen years’ 
war had done its work with the veterans who had crossed 
the Alps, and who had fought at Trasimene and at 
Cannte. But the Italians, who had known Hannibal 
only in the days of his comparative adversity, seem to 
have been as devoted to him as if they had had a share 
in winning all his laurels. The cavalry, as usual, were 
placed upon the wings, and, in front of the whole, 
marched a magnificent array of eighty elephants. Scipio, 
as every Roman general did, drew up his army in the 
three lines of hastati, principes, and triarii. But, ob¬ 
serving the number of the enemy’s elephants—by a 
happy thought which alone would distinguish him from 
the majority of Roman generals, who would have pre¬ 
ferred to be conquered by rule rather than try to con- 


224 


Rome and Carthage. 


quer without it - he placed the maniples of the second 
and third lines immediately behind those of the first. 
Thus, instead of covering his ground chequer-wise, he 
left broad lanes through the whole depth of his army, of 
which the sagacious elephants, when they found them¬ 
selves goaded by the Roman lances, would be likely to 
avail themselves for their escape. 

The plan succeeded; and the whole array of elephants, 
frightened by the blare of the trumpets, made the best 
of their way through these open lanes, some 
Zama ° f t0 t ^ le fl an ^ s °f their own, and others to the 
rear of the Roman army, without trampling 
the legionaries to death or even breaking their line of 
battle. Those which escaped to the flanks of the army 
threw into confusion their own cavalry, who were al¬ 
ready outnumbered by the Numidians opposed to them. 
Hannibal thus found on this fatal day that his two most 
formidable weapons—his elephants and his cavalry— 
had been turned against himself. Laelius and Massi- 
nissa soon drove the disordered Carthaginian horsemen 
from the field ; but the conflict in the centre was much 
more stubborn. When Hannibal's first line gave way, 
the second tried by blows to drive them back to the bat¬ 
tle. There had not been time for Hannibal to throw 
over these raw mercenaries that commanding spell 
which, during his long campaigns in Italy, and under 
circumstances which looked even more desperate than 
these, had made desertion or mutiny, or half-hearted- 
ness among their Gallic or Ligurian countrymen alike 
impossible. Some of them, to the number of eleven 
hundred, now went over to the enemy ; but the veterans 
did their duty well, and withstood the combined attack 
of Scipio’s second and third lines. They stood and fought 
without flinching, till Laelius and Massinissa, returning 


Battle of Zama. 


225 


from the pursuit of the cavalry, closed in upon their 
flanks and rear, and then, like Napoleon’s Old Guard at 
Waterloo, still without flinching, they fought and fell. 

Twenty thousand of the Carthaginian army had fallen 
in the battle. Twenty thousand more had been taken 
prisoners, and Hannibal himself escaped, 
with a few survivors only, to Adrumetum. aftodefeat. 
He fled, not because he wished to prolong 
the campaign, for he had the magnanimity to confess 
that he was conquered not only in the battle but in the 
war; still less because he cared for any personal reason 
to save his own life, but because he felt that the terrroj^ 
of his name and the undefined possibilities which, as in 
the case of his father at the close of the First Punic War, 
the Romans still attached to it, might enable him to pro¬ 
cure better terms for his unfortunate countrymen'. Never 
did a general return to his native country, after a long 
absence, under a fate more cruel. The hero of a hun¬ 
dred victories saw his native city for the first time after 
his one defeat, but that one a defeat so crushing that it 
could not but, for the moment, obliterate the memory of 
all that had preceded it. But with true dignity and self- 
respect, he set himself to accept the inevitable, and to 
make what he could of it. Scipio prepared as though 
he would besiege the city, but his heart also inclined to 
peace. He knew that the consul was already on his 
way who might rob him of much of his well-earned 
glory, and with that prudence or that moderation which 
was habitual to him, he forbore to push his victory to the 
bitter end. 

The terms which he offered were severe enough, and 
had the CartlAginians only realized what they involved, 
they would surely have asked to be allowed to meet their 
fate at once. They were to retain indeed their own 


226 


Rome ami Carthage. 


laws and their home domain in Africa; but they were 
to give up all the deserters and prisoners of war, all their 
elephants, and all their ships of the line but 
peaS!° f ten. They were not to wage war, either in 
Africa or outside of it, without the sanc¬ 
tion of the Roman Senate. They were to recognize 
Massinissa as the king of Numidia, and, with it, the 
prescriptive right which he would enjoy of plundering 
and annoying them at his pleasure, while they looked 
on with their hands tied, not daring to make reprisals. 
Finally, they were to give up all claim to the rich islands 
of the Mediterranean and to the Spanish kingdom, the 
creation of the Barcides, of which the fortune of war had 
already robbed them; and thus shorn of the sources of 
their wealth, they were to pay within a given term of 
seven years a crushing war contribution ! Henceforward, 
in fact, they would exist on sufferance only, and that 
the sufferance of the Romans. Still the terms of peace, 
heavy though they were, were as light under the circum¬ 
stances as they could expect; and Hannibal dragged 
down with his own hands from the rostrum an ill- 
judging orator who was recommending a continuance of 
the struggle. The people gave vent to their indignation 
at this infringement of their liberty of speech ; but Han¬ 
nibal pertinently replied that they must forgive him if, 
after thirty-six years’ service in the camp, he had forgot¬ 
ten the manners of the forum. 

The terms which had been agreed upon by Scipio and 
the Carthaginian government were referred to the Roman 
Senate for their approval; and ambassadors were sent 
from Carthage, with Hasdrubal, surnamed the Kid, the 
leader of the peace party, and the bitter opponent of 
the Barcine family, as their spokesman, to plead the 
cause of the conquered. The Romans accepted the 


Burning of Carthaginian fleet. 


227 


conditions, for they felt that this time the Carthaginians 
were in earnest, and they felt also that Hannibal was 
still at large, and it might not be well, even then, to 
drive him to despair. 

The conclusion of the peace was celebrated at Car¬ 
thage by a cruel sight, the most cruel which the citizens 
could have beheld, except the destruction , 

. . 4 . . Burning of 

of the city itself—the destruction of their Carthaginian 

fleet. Five hundred vessels, the pride and flect ' 
glory of the Phoenician race, the symbol and the seal 
of the commerce, the colonization, and the conquests of 
this most imperial of Phoenician cities, were towed out 
of the harbour and were deliberately burned in the sight 
of the citizens. In the days of the greatest prosperity 
of Carthage if any signal reverse happened to her—if, 
for instance, a storm at sea destroyed a portion of her 
navy, and so touched her in that on which she most 
prided herself, the command of the seas—the whole 
state would go into mourning, and the huge walls of the 
city would themselves be draped in black. It is a 
strange and touching custom, and the mention of it here 
may, perhaps, better enable us to picture to ourselves 
the feelings of the discrowned queen of the seas. Scipio 
now set sail for Italy, and, landing at Lilybaeum, made 
bis way leisurely towards Rome through the cities and 
the provinces which he had freed from the invader, 
and which fondly hailed him as their deliverer. 

He had delivered them, but from what and to what 
end ? He had delivered them from the immediate 
scourge of foreign war ; but it remained to 
be seen how far they would be gainers what use 

0 would Rome 

thereby. It remained to be seen, now that make of her 

their great rival in the western Mcditerra- v ' ctory ’ 
nean was put out of the way, whether Rome would 


228 


Rome and Carthage. 


visit the Greek and the Sicilian, the Apulian and the 
Campanian towns, which had been guilty of coquetting 
with the invader, with that condign vengeance which 
she had already wreaked on the unhappy Capua and 
Tarentum ; whether she would hand them over to the 
more lingering oppression of Roman magistrates and 
tax-gatherers ; or whether, throwing off the narrow mu¬ 
nicipal conceptions in which she had grown up, she 
would rise to the imperial dignity which circumstances 
had forced upon her. In other words, it remained to be 
seen whether Rome would govern the states which were 
already, or were hereafter to be, enrolled in her vast 
empire, in their own interests, encouraging, as far as was 
consistent with her own safety, their national life, de¬ 
veloping their resources, giving them a liberty which 
was not a license, and a security which was not a soli¬ 
tude. If Rome rose to this, her true dignity, we can 
hardly regret in the interests of humanity that Hanni¬ 
bal’s enterprise ended as it did. But if her conduct was 
the reverse, or nearly the reverse, of all this, we may at 
least be allowed to question, as we have already hinted, 
what most historians have laid down as an axiom too self- 
evident to be worth discussing, whether it was for the good 
of the human race that Rome should not only out-top, but 
should utterly extirpate, her ancient rival. We may 
believe, on the whole, in the survival of the fittest, and 
that arms generally come to him who can best handle 
them ; but it is open to us to regret that even the less fit 
were not allowed to survive as well. There was surely 
room on the shores of the Mediterranean and on the 
Ocean beyond for the Phoenician as well as the Roman 
civilization ; and the worst excesses of the Romans, the 
perfidy and the brutality of their wars in Spain, their 
grinding and oppressive system of taxation, the de- 


Last Rival of Rome removed. 229 

struction of Corinth the eye of Greece, their civil wars 
themselves, might have been mitigated or postponed, if 
they could not have been altogether prevented by the 
salutary knowledge that they had powerful rivals on the 
other side of the Mediterranean who would not allow 
them to be judge and jury, council, criminal, and exe¬ 
cutioner all in one. 


CHAPTER XVIII. 

CARTHAGE AT THE MERCY OF ROME. 

(201-150 B.C ) 

The fifty years which passed between the end of the Se¬ 
cond and the outbreak of the Third Punic War were 
years in which Rome advanced with extraor- _ 

J Deterioration 

dinarily rapid strides towards the empire of of Roman 
the world; but they witnessed also the inci- chalJCter - 
pient decay of all that was best in the Roman character. 
Already in the Second Punic War we have seen indica¬ 
tions that the Golden Age of Rome was passing aw ay. 
Whatever the heroic qualities which the long struggle 
called forth, we feel that the stern simplicity, the simple 
faith, the submission to law which formed the ground¬ 
work of the Roman character, and had marked, at all 
events, the dealings of Romans with each other, are not 
what they have been; and now, when the strain of the 
war is over, and the victorious city has to meet new pro¬ 
blems and to face new dangers, we find that except in the 
one point of her material strength, and her appliances for 
further conquest, she is unequal to the emergency. 

An emergency indeed it was! Three hundred 




230 


Rome and Carthage. 


thousand Italians had fallen in the field ; three hundred 
towns had been destroye d ; to the North the 
of°italy° n Gauls and the Ligurians were still unsub¬ 
dued ; in Central Italy, the Campanians, the 
Apulians, and the Samnites, who had long dallied with 
Hannibal, were awaiting their future in ill-concealed 
anxiety ; while in the extreme South, the Bruttians, who 
had clung to him to the last, abandoned themselves to 
their fate in dull despair. The Italian yeomen, who had 
never wavered in their attachment to Rome, torn from 
their homes for years, and demoralized by the camp, 
were unable or unwilling to settle down into the quiet 
routine of agricultural life. They went as settlers to 
those disaffected towns which Rome, according to her 
practice, selected as new military colonies, or were con¬ 
tent to swell the city rabble, which now began to rise 
into importance and was kept in good humour by largesses 
of corn, or by cruel and degrading public spectacles. 
Their farms passed into the hands of capitalists, and 
were cultivated by foreign slaves whom the frequent wars 
with the half-subdued provinces brought in shoals to 
Rome. “ Sardinians for sale,” was the sorry jest which 
rose to people’s lips when they saw a batch of these 
wretched creatures landed at Ostia, or exposed for what 
little they could fetch in the Roman Forum. “ The more 
slaves, the more enemies,” was the grim proverb which 
forced itself on their minds in all its stern reality, when 
they awoke to the danger, which it was then too late 
either to prevent or to cure. The rich arable lands of 
Italy fell back, as might be expected under such keeping, 
into pasture; and half-naked slaves tended herds of 
cattle where Roman consuls or dictators had been con¬ 
tent to plough and dig before them. When the slaves 
asked their masters for clothes to cover them, they were 




Condition of Roman Empire. 231 

met by the suggestion, half question and half answer, 
whether the travellers who passed through their solitudes 
were wont to pass naked ? 

In Rome itself the old aristocracy, which, it must be 
admitted, with all its faults, had been, on the whole, an 
aristocracy of merit, had given place to a 
new nobility of wealth, who were as exclu- Condition of 

Rome. 

sive, and certainly were not more far¬ 
sighted or more public-spirited, than their predecessors. 
Rule was no longer looked upon as its own reward. It 
was valued for what it brought, and high office lost half 
its dignity when it was won by a reckless display of 
wealth, or was used as a means of acquiring more. 
Religion was no longer the simple and childlike faith of 
the early commonwealth, but tended to become an affair 
of titles and of priests, of auguries and of ceremonies— 
of ceremonies which became more stringent and more 
vexatious exactly in proportion as they were felt to be 
less real. 

Beyond the confines of Italy Proper, Rome was mis¬ 
tress indeed of the four provinces which she had torn 
from Carthage in her fifty years’ war, of 
Hither and Further Spain, of Sicily and Of Roman 

r J provinces. 

Sardinia. But of these, Sicily alone was 
unlikely to give her further trouble ; and that, not be¬ 
cause she was well-aflected, but simply because she was 
exhausted. Sardinia supplied Rome with the living 
chattels which were to be so perilous a property ; while 
Spain entailed upon her a yet more disastrous heritage 
of petty wars—wars incessantly ended and incessantly 
renewed ; wars waged on the part of the Romans with 
a baseness and a cruelty such as have characterized few 
wars before or since. The wholesale murder of a tribe 
which had submitted, and the assassination of a for- 


232 


Rome and Carthage. 


midable but honourable foe, were the weapons with 
which the Roman generals managed to retain their hold 
over their Spanish provinces. 

It does not fall within the scope of this work to trace 
in detail the steps by which, in the interval between the 
First and the Second Punic Wars Rome ac- 

Roman con- , . , , , 

quests in the quired a universal supremacy as undisputed 

East - in the East as in the West; to show how 

Philip, who had scornfully remarked that the Roman 
general “ thought he might do anything with Macedon 
because he was a Roman, and that if war was what he 
wanted, war he should have,” found in a few short 
years, when the Macedonian phalanx first measured its 
strength with the Roman legion in the open field at 
Cynoscephalae, that the Roman general was not far 
wrong, and, being thus driven to sue for peace, was able, 
out of all his conquests or dependencies, to retain only 
his hereditary kingdom ; how the Greeks, delivered from 
the Macedonians, received at the hands of the Romans 
their nominal liberty, and greeted with short-sighted ac¬ 
clamations the Phil-hellenic Flamininus who was in fact 
giving them only a change of masters ; how “ the fetters 
of Greece,” first adjusted by Philip, were now riveted on 
that unhappy country by a firmer hand, and how its 
petty cities and blustering confederations, the degen¬ 
erate representatives of those states to whom the world 
owes Hellenic art and culture, after being allowed for a 
brief space to air their importance and their imbecility, 
settled down peaceably under the Roman protectorate, 
and avenged themselves by corrupting by their man¬ 
ners, or subduing by their arts, those whom they could 
not meet in arms ; how Antiochus the Seleucid, the suc¬ 
cessor, as he fondly thought, of the king of kings who 
rejoiced in the self-assumed name of the Great, was 


Roman Conquests in the East. 233 

driven by the Romans first out of Greece and then out 
of Asia Minor, eighty thousand of his Asiatic troops 
flying like chaff before the onset of less than half that 
number of Roman legionaries at Magnesia; how the 
Asia Minor that he had overrun gradually passed under 
the control of Rome while the puppet monarchs of its 
various portions humbly registered her decrees, and 
even the hordes of Gallic invaders learned to stop their 
ravages, or at least to keep at a respectful distance from 
her all-powerful arm; how the grand schemes of a 
greater than Antiochus the “ Great,” now a friendless 
exile at his court, were crushed, not so much by the 
wisdom or courage as by the good fortune of Rome 
which found her best ally in the jealousy and the inca¬ 
pacity of the empty-headed monarch who flattered him¬ 
self that he was Hannibal’s protector; how the Egyp¬ 
tian Ptolemy himself became the ward of Rome, and 
the chief naval power of the Eastern Mediterranean 
was saved from the ambitious schemes of Macedon and 
Syria only by the upstart naval power of Rome in the 
West; how, lastly, by the defeat of Perseus at Pydna, 
and the taking of Corinth by Mummius, Macedon and 
Greece disappeared for ever as independent powers from 
history, and became part and parcel of the Roman Em¬ 
pire. All these events, and many more, are crowded 
into the fifty years of existence which it still suited 
Rome by a cruel kindness to allow to her Carthaginian 
rival. But they belong to the general current of Ro¬ 
man history, rather than to that special episode of which 
this book treats. 

The year b. C. 146, which witnessed the fall of Corinth, 
witnessed also, by a strange coincidence, the destruction 
of Carthage ; and to the chain of events which led di¬ 
rectly up to that catastrophe we now turn. 


234 


Rome and Carthage. 


Beaten in the war by his cruel destiny, Hannibal 
made the best of his altered circumstances. He had 
lived many lives in what he had achieved 
a statesman 5 and suffered ; but he was still comparatively 

tat Carthage. a y 0un g m an, and he set himself, as though 

he had been born to be a statesman, to reform those 
abuses in the state which had done so much to mar his 
patriotic aims. His apology for his ignorance of the 
manners of the forum was hardly needed. He tri¬ 
umphantly refuted the accusations which the peace 
party were impudent enough, or base enough, to bring 
against him, that he had spared Rome, and had appro¬ 
priated to his own use the public money ! Whether by 
the help of his veterans, or by the voice of the citizens, 
he was appointed Shofete, or chief magistrate; and he 
used his power to overthrow the narrow and selfish oli¬ 
garchy whose strength lay in the council of “ the Hun¬ 
dred Judges.” Henceforward this council was to be 
filled up, not, as heretofore, by co-optation, but, in part 
at least, by free annual election. Lastly, Hannibal re¬ 
formed the financial system, made those who had 
thriven on the plunder of the treasury disgorge their 
ill-gotten gains, and applied the proceeds to the pay¬ 
ment of the war indemnity. So admirable were his 
measures, that at the end of thirteen years his suc¬ 
cessors were able to offer to pay up the whole of the 
instalments of the forty millions due to Rome, and that 
without imposing any additional taxes on the subjects 
of Carthage, 

These reforms stirred up a nest of hornets round the 
ears of their great author, and his new enemies joined 
his old ones in denouncing his projects to the Romans. 
Rome, indeed, hardly needed such an invitation ; she 
had made peace with Carthage, but not with Hannibal. 


Exile of Hannibal. 235 


If she no longer feared the city, she feared one of its 
simple citizens; and in spite of the protest 
of Scipio Africanus, Hannibal’s noble- driven into 
minded foe, an embassy was sent to de- exlle ' 
mand the surrender of the man whose bare existence 
disturbed her equanimity. From the crowning disgrace 
of complying with this demand, Hannibal saved his fel¬ 
low-citizens by going into voluntary exile. The greatest 
of the Phoenicians first visited Tyre, the cradle of his 
race, and passed thence to Ephesus, whither, as chance 
would have it, Antiochus had gone before him, that he 
might prepare for war with Rome. He was received 
with the highest honours; and, striking while the iron 
was hot, he asked the great king to place at his disposal 
a small fleet and army. If this boon were granted him, 
he undertook to sail to Carthage ; to renew the struggle 
with Rome in Africa ; thence once more to cross to Italy, 
and there meeting Antiochus himself—who was to ad¬ 


vance overland and draw fresh contingents as he ad¬ 
vanced from Macedon and Greece—to bear down with 
him on their common enemy. 

It was a magnificent scheme, and one which did not 
seem altogether impossible of realization, for just then 
a general rising in Spain gave the Romans 

i • 1 T Wanderings 

enough to do in the West alone. But it was and death of 
proposed to deaf ears. In vain did Hannibal Hanmbal - 
reveal, perhaps for the first time in his life, the secret 
which had been the mainspring of his achievements, the 
story of his early vow. The courtiers were jealous of 
the lonely exile, and the great king himself had no mind 
to be told by a suppliant and a refugee what his interests 
or his duty called for, or, if he was told, to do it. Against 
his own urgent entreaties, Hannibal was carried into 
Greece, in the wake of the Syrian army, there to be 


Rome and Carthage. 


<236 

asked for fresh advice, which Antiochus took care again 
ostentatiously to reject. When his warnings turned out 
true, he was carried back into Asia, and Antiochus 
having, as it would seem, nothing for the greatest soldier 
of his age to do by land, sent him off to sea to escort 
some ships from Phoenicia. The small armament was 
met, as might have been expected, by the large Rhodian 
navy, and was overpowered in an engagement which 
took place off Side. Hannibal himself fought well and 
escaped to Ephesus just in time to see the huge force 
which, as Antiochus imagined, was to sweep the Romans 
out of Asia. This force was itself annihilated at Mag¬ 
nesia, and the conquerors demanded, as one of the 
conditions of peace, that Hannibal should be surrendered 
to them. Once more he anticipated the demand. He 
fled to Crete, and thence returning to Asia, wandered 
from land to land, till at last he found refuge with 
Prusias, the petty king of Bithynia. There he lived for 
some years ; but even there the Roman fear, or hatred, 
pursued him ; and at last, at a place called Libyssa, the 
Phoenician hero disappointed his implacable enemies— 
who were headed, it is sad to say, by no less a person 
than Flamininus, the conqueror of Macedon—in the only 
way which was now left to him, by taking the poison 
which, as the story goes, he used to carry about with him 
concealed in a ring. The oracle which had foretold that 
“ Libyssian soil should oneday give shelter to Hannibal,” 
was fulfilled, not by his return in his old age to his native 
country, but by his death in this remote corner of the 
Sea of Marmora, and for centuries afterwards a huge 
mound of earth was shown to travellers which was called 
“the tomb of Hannibal.” 

So died the last and the greatest of Hamilcar’s sons ; 
and it may be doubted—or may we not rather say, after 


Death of Hannibal. 


2 57 


such study as we have been able to give to their lives 
and actions, that it hardly admits of doubt—whether the 
whole of history can furnish another example of a father 
and a son, each cast in so truly heroic a mould, each so 
worthy of the other, and each proving so brilliantly, in 
his own person, through a lifelong struggle with fate, that 
success is in no way necessary to greatness ? 

In the same year with Hannibal died his great rival, 
Scipio Africanus, the victim of a like reverse of fortune. 
Like Hannibal, the victor of Zama had tried 
his hand at politics, but, like many other of 

great generals who have followed his ex¬ 
ample, in politics he does not seem to have been at home. 
He longed for literary repose, and when the tide of pop¬ 
ular favour turned against him, he retired into a kind of 
voluntary exile at Liternum. ‘‘Ungrateful country,” he 
cried, with his last breath, “ thou shalt not have my 
ashes.” 

The great Carthaginian leader was gone, but some¬ 
thing of his handiwork still remained in the 
which his reforms had secured for his native 
city, in spite of the ever-increasing depreda¬ 
tions of Massinissa. The Second Tunic War 
had hardly been concluded, and the terms of peace 
agreed to, when that wily Numidian, lord, by the favour 
of Rome, of the dominions of Syphax as well as of his 
own, began to justify his position by encroaching on the 
Emporia to the south-east of Carthage. This was the 
richest part of the Phoenician territory in Africa ; it con¬ 
tained the oldest Phoenician colonies, and had belonged 
to Carthage by a prescription of at least 300 years. Tne 
Carthaginians, as by treaty bound, appealed to Rome 
protection ; and Scipio, the best judge of its provisions, 
as well as one of the most honourable of Roman citizens, 


prosperity 

Delenda est 
Carthago. 


R 


238 


Rome and Carthage. 


went over to Africa to decide the matter. But he decided 
nothing, and Massinissa was left in possession of his 
plunder. This led to fresh encroachments on the other 
side of the Carthaginian territory along the river Bagra- 
das, and these again to fresh commissions from Rome, 
which always ended in the same way. At last the 
trampled worm turned on its oppressor ; but fortune was 
on the side of the chartered brigandage of Massinissa. 
Hasdrubal, at the head of the patriotic party, was com¬ 
pletely defeated, and Carthage itself was in danger. The 
Carthaginians, by neglecting to ask leave of Rome to 
defend themselves, had at length given the Romans the 
very pretext which they wanted for interfering actively 
and giving them the coup de grace. Already before this 
a new commission had been sent out with old Marcus 
Cato at its head. It proved to be an evil day for Car¬ 
thage. The Censor had passed through the rich districts 
which still remained to her. He had been amazed at 
the wealth, the population, and the resources of the 
city, which he had believed was crushed ; and he returned 
home with his narrow mind thoroughly impressed with 
the belief that if Rome was to be saved, Carthage must 
be destroyed. Cato brought to the consideration of every 
subject a mind thoroughly made up upon it. No one 
ever reasoned him out of an opinion he had formed. 
He exhibited in the Senate some figs as remarkable for 
their freshness as their size ; and telling the admiring 
senators that they grew in Carthaginian territory only 
three days’ sail from Rome, he ended his speech that 
day, and everv speech which he delivered in the Senate 
afterwards, whatever the subject under debate, with the 
memorable words—Carthage must be blotted out. 

























RUSSELL & 6TRUTHERS, ENG'S, N. Y. 















Topography of Carthage. 


239 


CHAPTER XIX. 

DESTRUCTION OF CARTHAGE. 

(149-146 B.C.) 

Our knowledge of the Third Punic War is derived al¬ 
most exclusively from Appian, a mere compiler, who 
did not live till the time of the Emperor 
Hadrian, and whose accuracy, where he J f °P°^aphy 
draws upon his own resources, may be 
judged from the fact that he places Saguntum to the 
north of the Ebro, and makes Britain only half a day’s 
sail from Spain. Fortunately for us, however, there is 
good reason to believe that his account of the fall of 
Carthage is drawn directly from Polybius, who not only 
stands in the highest rank as an historian, but was him¬ 
self present and bore a part in the scenes which he de¬ 
scribed, and here, perhaps, before we look upon the 
last scene of all, will be the place to describe, as clearly 
as we can, the position, the fortifications, and the ap¬ 
pearance of the imperial city. We noticed, at the out¬ 
set, the strange obscurity which hangs over the origin, 
the rise, and the internal life of a city whose influence 
was for centuries so wide-spread and so commanding. 
The same obscurity unfortunately extends also to its 
topography. The blind forces of Nature, and the ruth¬ 
less hand of Man, have conspired to efface even its 
ruins. It is not merely the identification in detail of its 
walls, its temples, and its streets, for these might have 
been expected to disappear ; but it is those more perma¬ 
nent features of its citadel and its harbours, nay, it is 
the position of the city itself, which is in some points 


24 ° Rome and Carthage. 

open to dispute. How this has come about requires ex¬ 
planation. 

To the north of the city the tempests of two thousand 
years, and the alluvial deposits of the river Bagradas, 
which now enters the sea several miles to 
by n"mre made the north of its former mouth, have turned 
and man. much which, in the palmy days of Car¬ 
thage, was open sea into dry land or into land-locked 
lagunes ; while along the whole east and north front of 
the city the sea has revenged itself by encroaching on 
the land, and the massive substructions of fortifications 
which, perhaps, turned Agathocles aside and long baf¬ 
fled even Scipio, may still be seen engulfed beneath the 
waters at the distance of a furlong or more from the 
present coast. Nor has man been less destructive than 
Nature. On the same or nearly the same spot have 
risen successively a Phoenician, a Roman, a Vandal, and 
a Byzantine capital. Each was destroyed in whole or 
in part by that which was to take its place, and each 
successive city found ample materials for its own rise in 
the ruins which it had itself occasioned. The Byzan¬ 
tine city was finally destroyed in 698 a. d. Since that 
time its site has been almost uninhabited, and Berbers 
and Bedouins, Fatimite Kalifs and Italian Republics, 
German Emperors and French Kings, have all had a 
share in the work of obliteration. The debris of so 
many cities have formed a vast quarry out of which 
neighbouring hamlets and towns have been built and 
rebuilt, and, if we except the aqueducts and reservoirs, 
which, even to the most cursory observer, tell the tale 
of its former population and prosperity, he who would 
see any remains of the once imperial city must dig deep 
down through fathoms of crumbling masonry, or 
through mosaic pavement laid above mosaic pavement, 


Fortifications of Carthage. 


241 


sometimes three in number, till, perchance, he lights 
upon a votive tablet covered with Punic characters and 
scored with rude figures of a triangle and an uplifted 
hand, or, it may be, with the two horns of the Moon- 
goddess, Astarte ; or brings to view the basement of the 
mighty temple which witnessed the bloody offerings to 
Baal-Moloch. 

The isthmus connecting the peninsula on which Car¬ 
thage was built with the mainland was three miles across, 
and the whole of the widening ground to 
the east of it, embracing a circuit of about f} ze ° { 

0 Carthage. 

twenty-three miles, would seem, at one time, 
to have been covered by the city proper, its suburbs, 
its gardens, and its burying-ground. The penin¬ 
sula terminates towards the north and east in two 
bluff headlands, now called Cape Ghamart and Cape 
Carthage. Whether these were included in the city 
fortifications or were left to defend themselves as out¬ 
lying forts by their own inherent strength, is not quite 
clear. 

The city proper was adequately defended on the three 
sides which touched the water by ordinary sea-walls; 
but on the side towards the land, the side 

from which alone the mistress of the seas f ts fortifica- 

i-i tions. 

and islands could dream of serious danger, 

ran a triple line of fortifications, of which the remains 

have only very recently been brought to light. The 

outer wall which would have to bear the brunt of an 

attack, was six or seven feet thick and forty-five feet 

high, and it was flanked throughout its length by towers 

at equal distances of two hundred feet. Between this 

and the two similar walls which rose behind it, and 

somehow forming part of them so as to make the whole 

one compact mass of masonry were casemates capable 


<43 


Rome and Carthage. 

of containing three hundred elephants, with their vast 
stores of food. Above these rose another story with 
stabling for four thousand horses. In close proximity 
there weye barracks for their riders, as well as for twenty 
thousand infantry. These magnificent fortifications ran 
up from near the lake of Tunis to the hill on which the 
citadel was built, and here were dovetailed into the wall 
of the citadel itself, but, it would seem, were not con¬ 
tinued on the same scale to the sea to the north of it. 
The nature of the ground appears to have made the 
prolongation of such elaborate defences unnecessary, 
and the only point which was really weak in the whole 
line of defence was the bit of wall at the south angle of 
the town, just where a narrow tongue of land, called the 
Tsenia, which plays an important part in the siege, cut 
off the open gulf from the lake which lay within it. 
This spot, lying as it were between land and water, was 
especially open to attacks from both, but seems never to 
have been sufficiently protected against either. 

Besides the Lake of Tunis there were two landlocked 
docks or harbours, opening the one into the other, and 
both, it would seem, the work of human 
Its harbours. j lan( j Si fj lc portus alii ejfodiunt, says 

Virgil, and in this instance, at least, he speaks historical 
truth. The outer harbour was rectangular, about four¬ 
teen hundred feet long and eleven hundred broad, and 
was appropriated to merchant vessels ; the inner was 
circular like a drinking cup, whence it was called the 
Cothon, and was reserved for ships of war. It could 
not be approached except through the merchant har¬ 
bour, and the entrance to this last was only seventy feet 
wide, and could be closed at any time by chains. The 
war harbour was entirely surrounded by quays, contain¬ 
ing separate docks for 220 ships. In front of each dock 


Harbours of Carthage. 



PLAN OF HARBOURS AT CARTHAGE 














































244 


Rome and Carthage. 

were two Ionic pillars of marble, so that the whole must 
have presented the appearance of a splendid circular 
colonnade. Right in the centre of the harbour was an 
island, the headquarters of the admiral. Here he could 
superintend all the operations of that thriving and 
industrious population ; here his orders were proclaimed 
by the voice of the trumpet, and from its most elevated 
point he could oversee the intervening strip of land, and 
keep himself informed of all that was going on in the open 
sea beyond. In time of war he could view a hostile 
fleet approaching and watch all its movements, while 
the enemy could know nothing of what was being done 
inside. We have no full description of the merchants’ 
harbour ; but in time of peace the spacious Lake of 
Tunis, which was much deeper then than now, would 
afford safe anchorage to the myriads of merchant ves¬ 
sels which no artificial harbour could contain, and which, 
sweeping the whole of the Western Mediterranean, were 
not afraid in very early times to tempt the dangers of 
even the Ocean beyond. Such was the general aspect 
and position of the city whose last struggle we have now 
to relate. That struggle was heroic, desperate, and 
superhuman, but the conclusion was foregone; and he 
who gazed on the free and the imperial, may well be 
excused from dwelling at length on the agonies of the 
doomed city. 

The resolution of Rome was taken. The question of 
time was the only one that remained, and the straits to 
which Carthage had been already reduced 
War declared. Massinissa demonstrated to the few dis¬ 
sentients alike the guilt of the city and the fitness of the 
present moment. In vain did P. Cornelius Scipio Nas- 
ica, a man worthy of his name, protest against the idea 
that it was necessary, in order that Rome might be 


Perfidia plusquam Ptinica. 


*45 


strong, that her rival must be destroyed ; and point out 
what a useful check upon the growing tide of luxury 
and corruption the bare existence of her ancient foe 
might prove. In vain did the Carthaginians condemn 
Hasdrubal and Carthalo, the leaders of the patriotic 
party, to death. In vain did they send embassy after 
embassy to Rome, proffering the amplest compensation 
and the most unlimited submission. The Romans re¬ 
plied that they wanted only “ satisfaction ; ” to the nat¬ 
ural question as to what “ satisfaction” meant, they re¬ 
joined that the Carthaginians knew that best themselves. 
Just then too the rats began to leave the sinking vessel ; 
for there arrived an embassy from Utica, the mother- 
city of Carthage herself, surrendering the city absolutely 
to the Romans. This was just what the Romans wanted, 
for it gave them an unimpeded landing, and a second 
base of operations in Africa, only ten miles from Car¬ 
thage. An armament of eighty thousand men had al¬ 
ready been raised, and it was at once despatched under 
the Consuls, Manilius and Censorinus, to Lilybaeum, on 
its way to Africa. War was thus declared and begun 
on the very same day. 

To a final embassy which, even after this, was sent to 
Rome, and was instructed to avert the invasion by any 
and by every means, the Romans replied, 
that the Carthaginians had now at length Pcrfid lf p'. us - 

0 0 quam Pumca. 

done well, and that Rome would guarantee 
to Carthage “ her territory, her sacred rites, her tombs, 
her liberty, and her possessions,” if three hundred hos¬ 
tages, drawn from the noblest families, were delivered to 
the consuls at Lilybaeum within thirty days. Long be¬ 
fore the thirty days were out the demand was complied 
with, by the obsequious zeal of the Carthaginians, who 
were then told that the further demands of the Romans 



246 


Ro?ne and Carthage. 


would be made known in Africa. This secured the Ro 
mans from all opposition in crossing or in landing; and 
when the ambassadors again presented themselves in 
Utica, they were told that, as Carthage was hencefor¬ 
ward to be under the protection of Rome, they would 
need no other protection at all. All arms and all en¬ 
gines of war were therefore to be given up. After some 
remonstrances this demand too was complied with, and 
long lines of wagons brought to the consuls two thou¬ 
sand catapults and two hundred thousand stands of 
arms. Then Censorinus rose, and all possibility of re¬ 
sistance having, as he thought, been taken away, re¬ 
vealed the final orders of Rome—the orders which, it 
must be remembered, had been secretly committed to 
him and his brother-consul from the very beginning— 
that Carthage was to be destroyed, but that the citizens 
might build a new city in any part of their territory 
they pleased, provided only it was ten miles from the 
coast. 

The Consul was interrupted in the few words he had 
to say by an outburst of grief and indignation on the 

part of the assembled senators and ambas- 
Scene m sadors. They beat their breasts, they tore 

Roman camp. J J 

their hair and clothes, they threw themselves 
on the ground in their agony. The Romans were pre¬ 
pared for this, and kindly allowed their grief to have its 
way. When the first outburst was over, and the ambas¬ 
sadors found that all their appeals to the treaty and to 
the recent understanding with Rome were alike un¬ 
availing, they begged, in the extremity of their distress. 
that the Roman fleet might appear before the walls of Car¬ 
thage at the same time with themselves; a step which 
they deemed would make resistance seem doubly hope¬ 
less, and would save the lives which, in the paroxysm 


Scene at Carthage. 


247 


of their fury, the inhabitants would otherwise be likely 
to throw away. Many of them, even so, were afraid to 
face the reception which awaited them in the city, and 
remained behind in the Roman camp. Those who had 
the courage to bear the fatal message gave no answer to 
the citizens who thronged out to meet them as they 
neared the city walls; but, keeping their eyes on the 
ground, made their way, as best they could, in imminent 
danger of their lives, to the council chamber. 

The cry which burst from the assembled senators 
when they learned the Roman ultimatum was taken up 
by the multitude outside; and then was seen a sublime 
outburst of frenzy and despair, to which history affords 
no parallel. The multitude wreaked their 
fury on the senators who had counselled sub- ^. cen u at 

' * Carthage. 

mission, on the ambassadors who had 
brought back the message, on the gods who had forsaken 
them. All the Italians found within the walls were put to 
death with torture. There was a rush of the infuriated citi¬ 
zens to the armoury; but they found there only the empty 
stands, which a few days before had been laden with 
arms. They adjourned to the harbour, but the docks 
were empty; there were only vast supplies of timber 
there, which, but for their blind fidelity to the very treaty 
which the Romans had set at nought, might ere now 
have been converted into ships-of-war. They called by 
name on the elephants whose horse-shoe stalls still stood 
beneath the shelter of the huge triple wall, and whose 
deeds of prowess in the last war were still remembered, 
but alas! were matters of remembrance only. The 
matrons whose sons had been taken to serve as hostages 
rushed about like furies, upbraiding the magistrates who 
had disregarded their remonstrances, and the gods who 
could look on unmoved at their grief. Meanwhile the 


248 


Rome and Carthage. 


Senate, or what remained of it, declared war; the gates 
were closed; stones were carried to the walls; all the 
slaves in the city were set free; messages were sent to 
the outlawed Hasdrubal, who was at large at the head of 
twenty thousand men, begging him to forgive and for¬ 
get, and to save the city, which, in his just indignation, 
he was even then preparing to attack. A second Has¬ 
drubal, the grandson of Massinissa, was made com¬ 
mander-in-chief; and while leave was being humbly 
asked, and refused, to send once more to Rome, before 
the irrevocable deed was done, the whole city was turned 
into one vast workshop. Its buildings—public and 
private, sacred and profane alike—resounded with the 
workman’s hammer and anvil. Lead was stripped off 
from the roofs and iron torn out of the walls. Men and 
women worked day and night, taking neither rest nor 
sleep; the matrons cut off their long hair and twisted it 
into ropes for the catapults; and while the Romans were 
hesitating, partly perhaps from pity to their victims, 
partly from the belief that a few days would demonstrate 
even to these frenzied Phoenicians the hopelessness of 
resistance, arms were extemporized for an adequate 
number of the citizens, and the city was somehow put 
into a position to stand a siege. 

When at last the executioners approached to receive 
its submission, they found, to their surprise, that the gates 
were closed, and that the walls were fully 
manned and armed with all the engines of 
war. There was nothing for it but to try force. 
But force they tried in vain. Manilius attacked the city 
on the land side where it was strongest, for a wall and 
ditch ran right across the isthmus from sea to sea; Cen- 
sorinus from the side of the Taenia, between land and 
water, where it was weakest. To their dismay both at- 


Failure of 
Romans. 


Death of Massinissa. 


249 

tempts failed; and each had to go through the humiliat¬ 
ing process of fortifying his camp. Censorinus now 
proceeded to bring up wood and woodcutters from the 
other side of the lake of Tunis, and filled in with stones 
and soil that portion of it which lay behind the Taenia, 
so that he might bring his battering rams to bear upon 
the weakest part of the wall. A portion of it fell beneath 
a gigantic ram, propelled by 6,000 soldiers. But the 
damage was partially repaired during the night, and the 
besieging engines themselves were disabled by a sudden 
sortie. On the following day the Romans ventured 
through the part of the breach which was still open ; but 
they were glad enough to make their way out again 
under the protection of the young Scipio, who was then 
serving in their army as a simple military tribune. With 
the rising of the dogstar pestilence broke out in the ranks 
of the besiegers, and when Censorinus transferred his 
ships from the fetid waters of the lake to the open sea, 
they narrowly escaped being destroyed by the Cartha¬ 
ginian fire-ships. 

The year b.c. 149 drew towards its close, and when 
Censorinus returned to Rome to hold the elections for the 
ensuing year, he had no progress to report. 

Operations were not suspended during the Massi'nitsa. 
winter, and once and again, if our authorities 
are to be trusted, it would have fared ill with the other 
consul if Scipio had not come to the rescue. Hasdrubal 
and Himilco Phameas, who were in command of the 
Carthaginian army outside the city, showed themselves 
to be skilful generals ; and Massinissa himself, not liking 
to see the game taken out of his hands, when he thought 
it was his own, declined to supply the Romans with the 
aid which they asked. A rupture seemed imminent, but 
the wily old Numidian was spared the humiliation of 


250 


Rome and Carthage. 


seeing what he looked upon as his predestined booty 
appropriated by the Romans. It must have been a drop 
of consolation, the only drop of consolation in the cup 
of misery which the Carthaginians had now to drain 
that neither the honest Roman Censor nor the grasping 
Numidian king lived to see the deed for which they had 
so long worked and plotted. Cato and Massinissa died 
in the same year, after the destruction of Carthage had 
been finally resolved on, but, thanks to the heroism of 
the inhabitants, before it had been fully carried out. 

The generals of the year b.c. 148, the Consul Calpurnius 
Piso and his legate Mancinus, were not more successful 
and were less energetic even than their predecessors. 
The siege of Carthage was practically raised, and their 
term of office was frittered away in aimless and desultory 
attacks upon smaller places—such as Clypea and Hippo 
Zarytus—wherein success could have done them little 
service, and defeat, which was the more common result, 
entailed much discouragement and disorganization. 

So things might have gone on for years, and the 
Romans, by their unprovoked aggression, well deserved 

-that it should be so. But one man there 

^S'P!° ) was serving in a humble capacity in the 

Roman army, whom his exploits and his 
parentage, alike lineal and adoptive, marked out even 
then from his professional superiors. Even Cato, who 
was opposed on principle to his family and his mode of 
life, had applied to him what Homer says of the Seer 
Teiresias, amidst the airy phantoms of the netherworld, 
“ He alone is flesh and blood, the rest are fleeting 
shades.” P. Cornelius Scipio was the youngest son of 
Himilius Paullus, the conqueror of Macedonia. When 
quite a youth he had fought by his father’s side at Pydna, 
and he was afterwards adopted into a still more illustrious 



Scipio sEmilianus. 


25 1 

family, that of the Scipios. Like his grandfather, the 
great Africanus, he had early shown a taste for other arts 
than that of war; and his fondness for literature was 
cemented by the friendship which he formed, while still 
a youth, with the more distinguished of the Achaean exiles, 
above all with the historian Polybius. Not that he was, 
in any sense of the word, as Polybius himself and his 
contemporaries generally, not unnaturally, thought him, 
a man of genius. He was inferior in all respects to his 
grandfather by adoption, the elder Scipio. Yet his 
friendship with the best men of his time was a pure and 
noble friendship, and was worthy of being immortalized 
by the song of Horace and by the De Amicitia of Cicero. 
It was well for Rome that to a man so born and bred, 
and so richly endowed amidst the blunders and the in¬ 
capacity of his nominal superiors, the eyes of the Roman 
soldiers, and the Roman citizens alike, were now in¬ 
stinctively turning for safety. Three times over, so it 
was said, during the absence of Censorinus, by his ad¬ 
dress or valour, had Scipio saved the army of the other 
consul, Manilius, from destruction. He had even induced 
the ablest of the Carthaginian generals, Himilco Pha- 
meas, to cross over to the Romans with 2,500 cavalry 
But the most that he could do in his capacity of mere 
military tribune was to anticipate or undo the blunders of 
his superiors ; and it seemed more and more possible that 
Carthage might yet weather the storm, when, fortunately 
for himself and for Rome, Scipio left the army to stand 
for the yEdileship. He was accompanied to the ship by 
the soldiers, who did not conceal their hope that he 
would soon return as their commander-in-chief; and as 
their commander-in-chief he soon did return. Now as 
on one or two other occasions in their history, notably 
as when the elder Scipio had volunteered to take the 


2 5 l * 


Rome and Carthage. 


command in Spain, the Romans, wedded though they 
were to constitutional forms, saw that there was some¬ 
thing more important even than those forms, the safety 
of the state itself; and in spite of his age, which was still 
six years below the legal age, and of his not having filled 
any other curule office, the young Scipio was elected not 
to the ^Edileship, but to the Consulship, with the implied 
understanding, as in the case of the elder Scipio, that 
his command was not to come to an end except with the 
end of the war. 

The new consul arrived in Africa at a critical moment. 

He first rescued from imminent destruction Mancinus, 
one of the outgoing generals, who had al- 
sions h of nCur " lowed himself to be cut off from all sup- 
Scipio. plies and reinforcements on a high cliff in 

the suburbs, and then brought back the other army of 
the consul Piso which was still carrying on a make-be¬ 
lieve warfare amidst the inland towns, to its proper 
work, the siege of the capital. Having restored disci¬ 
pline by clearing his camp of the ineffectives and of 
the birds of prey of various species which had accumu¬ 
lated in it with amazing rapidity, during the exploits of 
the last two years, he managed to take the vast suburbs 
of Megara by surprise, and thus compelled Hasdrubal 
to abandon his open camp and to take refuge in the 
Byrsa. The siege of the city proper now began in ear¬ 
nest, and now also began, if we may believe our au¬ 
thorities, a reign of terror for the unhappy Carthagini ans , 
who were pent up within it. Having got rid of his 
namesake, the commander of the garrison, by false'*'" 
charges, Hasdrubal installed himself as commander-in¬ 
chief. But he proved to be as vain as he was cruel, and 
as weak as he was pretentious. His first act was to 
bring all the Roman prisoners to the battlements, and 


The Mole and the New Outlet. 


253 


after torturing them cruelly, to throw them over the wall 
in sight of the Roman army. When expostulations were 
addressed to him by some of the citizens, he vented his 
rage on them in a similar manner. 

Scipio bridled his indignation, caring little if his re¬ 
venge were slow provided only it were sure. He carried 
a double line of fortifications right across the 
isthmus within a bowshot of the city walls, Sci P losmoIe - 
thus at once protecting himself from a surprise and ef¬ 
fectually cutting off the Carthaginians from all succor 
un the land side. But the sea was still open to its own 
children, and fearless blockade-runners kept entering 
the narrow mouth of the merchant harbour right under 
the eyes of the Romans. Scipio therefore began to con¬ 
struct a mole of huge stones, which, starting from the 
Taenia, should block up for ever the mouth of the har¬ 
bour. This operation, if it was feasible, would make 
the surrender only a question of time. At first the Car¬ 
thaginians thought it was not feasible. But it progressed 
rapidly, and in two months it was all but completed, 
v hen, to the infinite surprise and chagrin of the Romans, 
a fleet of fifty triremes, hastily built of materials which 
d been accumulated before the war began, sailed out, 
as it were, through dry land, into the open sea, and that 
at a point where the waters were so deep and the surf 
so angry that it was hopeless to think of closing the exit 
by any further prolongation of the mole. 

How so gigantic a work can have been accomplished 
—new ships built, and a new passage opened—without 
even a suspicion being roused in the minds 
the Romans as to what was going on, it 
i difficult to say. Deserters, indeed, had 
rc ported that the workman’s pickaxe and hammer were 
to be heard day and night within the harbour quarter. 


254 


Rome and Carthage. 


which was itself surrounded by a wall. But the secret 
had been kept; and kept, it would seem, not merely from 
the Romans, but from the mass of the citizens them¬ 
selves. It is another illustration of that suspicious 
shrewdness which marked the policy of the ruling Car¬ 
thaginian oligarchy throughout its history—a shrewdness 
which often, indeed, outwitted itself, but sometimes, as 
in this supreme crisis of their fate, did good service, and 
which explains in part what is otherwise so inexplicable 
—that alternation of caution and of rashness, of ebullient 
enthusiasm and of much enduring patience, of long¬ 
sighted provision and of short-sighted laissez faire, of 
sordid selfishness and of sublime self-abnegation, which 
baffles calculation and defies analysis, refusing to be 
accounted for by any ordinary combination of motives 
or to be tested by any of the received maxims of mo¬ 
rality. The Romans found that all their labour had 
been thrown away ; and if only the newly-fledged ves¬ 
sels had joined battle with them at once, instead of 
airing in childish but natural glee their untried powers 
of flight in the open gulf, they must have surprised and 
overpowered them. But this was not to be ; and after 
an evolution or two, they returned into the harbour 
through the passage by which they had left it. Three 
days after they sailed out again, and this time they 
offered battle. But the Romans had recovered from 
their dismay. The conflict was waged on equal terms, 
and on returning at nightfall to their harbour, the Car¬ 
thaginian ships, jostling against one another at its nar¬ 
row entrance, were exposed to the attacks of the enemy 
and suffered much loss. 

Baffled in his attempt to block up the harbour by sea, 
Scipio now attacked its fortifications by land from the 
side of the Taenia and from the newly constructed mole. 


255 


The Final Struggle. 

A part of its walls fell; but the Carthaginians, wading 
or swimming through the water by night, made an attack 
on the besieging lines, and then, suddenly kindling the 
torches which they carried, withstood, with the fury of 
maniacs or of wild beasts at bay, the darts which were 
rained on their naked bodies till they had effected their 
object, the destruction of the engines by fire, and had 
scattered panic throughout the Roman army. In the 
morning they repaired the breach in the fortifications at 
their leisure, and raised lofty towers along the harbour 
wall, to face the lines of circumvallation and the 
mounds with which the Romans were endeavouring to 
approach it. So the summer passed away and still 
Carthage stood. 

During the winter months Scipio attacked Nepheris, 
a town on the other side of the lake, the head-quarters 
of a relieving army, and the place from which provisions 
and supplies had been most systematically forwarded to 
the beleaguered Carthaginians ever since the siege 
began. Laelius, having received the chief command of 
the expedition, took the large fortified camp outside the 
town, and put to the sword a mixed multitude of seventy 
thousand soldiers and peasants. Soon afterwards the 
town itself fell into Scipio’s hands ; and all the isolated 
garrisons which had hitherto remained true to Carthage, 
together with the country which they commanded sub¬ 
mitted to Rome. And so one more winter passed away, 
and still—without a foot of ground which she could now 
call her own except that which her buildings covered, 
and without a soldier or a citizen save those who were 
penned within her walls—the grand old city held bravely 
out. 

But now her hour had come. At the beginning of 
the spring Scipio delivered his final attack. He first 


256 


Rome a fid Carthage. 


The final 
assault. 


Desperate 

resistance. 


took by storm the quarter of the merchants’ harbour ; 

then, with the help of a surprise planned 
and carried out by Laelius, the war harbour . 
and thence he passed without opposition 
into the adjacent market-place. 

The city might now have been thought to be in his 
hands. Three streets led up from the market-place to 
the citadel, and the citadel alone, it might 
have been anticipated, would now give any 
further trouble. But those three streets 
meant six days of fighting and of massacre. They were 
held by frenzied and despairing Phoenicians, and were 
well adapted for such a defence as frenzied and despair¬ 
ing Phoenicians alone could make. They were narrow, 
and above them rose houses six stories high with over¬ 
hanging eaves ; and from these such darts and missiles 
as came to hand would be hurled down in one continu¬ 
ous shower on the advancing foe. From such a down¬ 
pour even the Romans shrank. They hesitated for a mo¬ 
ment ; but it was for a moment only. Storming the 
first house to which they came, they put its inhabitants 
to the sword, and then, passing step by step, and inch 
by inch, from building to building, or from roof-top to 
roof-top by planks laid across the intervals, they massa¬ 
cred every living thing they met. Each house was a 
castle, and a castle defended by its garrison to the last 
extremity. The battle raged on the housetops, within 
the houses themselves, and in the streets below. Many 
of the inmates were hurled down from the windows or 
the roofs and caught on the pikes of the assailants. 

At last the citadel was reached and the fighting was 
at an end. But the most piteous scene of all was still 
to come. Scipio gave the order to fire the streets which 
it had cost the Romans so much to gain, to level the 


The Byrsa. 


2 57 


ruins, and so to open the approaches to the Byrsa which 
still frowned in front. It was a natural order, and one 
which did not appear to imply unneces¬ 
sary cruelty or loss of life. But, unknown ^he three 
to Scipio, a number of old men and 
women and children had concealed themselves only too 
skilfully in the cupboards or the cellars of the houses in 
which the fighting had been going on, and these were 
now burned alive, or fell with the falling buildings ; 
while others, half roasted or half suffocated, flung them¬ 
selves headlong from the windows into the streets. 
There they lay, and thence they were shovelled, dead 
and dying alike, amidst charred beams and crumbling 
masonry, into any hollows which required filling up. 
Heads or legs might be seen protruding from the reek¬ 
ing and the smouldering mass till they were trampled 
into nothing by the oncoming cavalry. This fearful 
scene Polybius himself witnessed and recorded. 

The six days of the struggle and the massacre were 
at last over. The Roman troops had frequently re¬ 
lieved each other during its progress, but 
Scipio had allowed himself to take no rest. andHasdru- 

He snatched his food only in the intervals balswlfe - 

of giving orders, and he now at last sat down on an 
“ elevated place ’’ to see what had been done and what 
yet remained to do. The Byrsa was not so much a cita¬ 
del or any single building, as that quarter of the city 
which was on the highest ground and was most strongly 
fortified. Within that quarter all who had escaped the 
starvation of the siege, and the tyranny of Hasdrubal, 
and the sword and fire of the Romans, were now hud¬ 
dled together ; and on the following day a deputation 
came forth, with suppliant branches and fillets taken 
from the temple of /Esculapius in their hands, begging 


258 


Rome and Carthage. 




Scipio to spare their lives. Their lives, but nothing 
else, the conqueror spared them, and fifty thousand 
men, women, and children came forth through the gate 
of the citadel. The nine hundred deserters from the 
Romans remained behind with Hasdrubal and his wife 
and children. For them no mercy was either asked 01- 
granted. They withdrew, first from the sixty steps which 
led up towards the citadel, to the level ground at the 
top ; thence into the temple of Hisculapius itself, and 
thence, once more, to its roof, determined to sell their 
lives as dearly as possible. But there was, it is said, one 
coward soul even amongst them. Alone and trembling, 
^Hasdru bal, the commander-in-chief, the murderer of his 
predecessor, the man wlio had tortured and massacred 
the Roman prisoners, who, if ouFT cports speak. trye, 
hacLstarved the citizen's while he himself feasFed and 
drank—the Marat and the Robespierre in one of the 
reign of terror which he had established—crept forth in 
suppliant guise, and threw himself at Scipio’s feet beg 
ging for his dear life. It was contemptuously granted 
him amidst the curses, loud and long, of the deserters 
who were crowded together on the roof, and who saw 
the dastardly deed. Worn out with fatigue they now set 
fire to the temple, and Hasdrubal’s wife, arraying her¬ 
self, like her majestic compatriot Jezebel, in her best at¬ 
tire, came forth, it is said, upon the ropf with her two 
sons, and after complimenting Scipio as a noble foe, 
and heaping reproaches on her recreant husband, she 
first slew her sons with the sword, and then, flinging 
herself and them together into the flames, died as be- 
came, not indeed the wife of Hasdrubal, but as became 
the wife of the last commander-in-chief of Carthage and 
the last of the free Phoenician r ace'TJ 

All resistance was now over, and Scipio was master 



Fate of Carthage. 259 

of a heap of smouldering ruins. But to him, at all 

events, the victory did not seem, even in 

the exuberance of the moment, to be mat- E ate . of 

Carthage. 

ter for unmixed congratulation. He burst 
into tears, and was overheard by his faithful friend 
Polybius repeating to himself in ominous tones the 
words of Homer, “ The day will come when sacred 
Troy shall fall, and Priam and Priam’s people too.” 
The work of butchery over, it was time for that of plun¬ 
der to begin. The gold and silver and temple orna¬ 
ments were reserved to grace Scipio’s triumph ; but the 
sculptures and the paintings and other works of art 
which had been stolen from the Sicilian cities were freely 
restored to them ; an act of grace and moderation oth¬ 
erwise unknown in the Roman annals, and, doubtless, 
due to the refined soul and Hellenic sympathies of the 
general himself. Many of these works of art were un¬ 
fortunately, as Cicero remarks, restored to the Sicilians 
by Scipio only that they might be taken from them by 
Verres ; but for this the Roman people at large are, 
happily, not responsible. The joy at Rome when 
Scipio’s galley, laden with the trophies of his victory, 
arrived, was boundless ; and it was some time before 
the citizens could fully realize the fact that their ancient 
rival, the rival which had once and again brought them 
to the brink of destruction, was no more. 

Much of the city still remained standing, and it was 
the wish of Scipio and of a small minority of the noblest 
Romans that that part should still be spared. But what 
had been granted even to the hated Capua was denied 
to Carthage. The spirit of old Cato seemed even from 
his tomb to rule the day, and the orders of the Senate 
were peremptory that every vestige of their hereditary 
foe was to be effaced. When every building had been 


260 


Rome and Carthage. 


levelled with the ground, the plough was driven over its 
remains, and a solemn curse was pronounced by Scipio 
on anyone who should attempt to rebuild the city, or 
even to dwell upon its site. The rest of the inhabitants 
vere, with few exceptions, sold as slaves. The one Car¬ 
thaginian who, if the tales told of him are to be trusted, 
was least worthy of his liberty and life, the miserable 
Hasdrubal himself, was—perhaps, by an act of crue 
kindness on the part of the Romans—allowed to retain 
them both, and after adorning Scipio’s triumph, to end 
his days in peace in Italy. Utica was rewarded for her 
desertion by an addition to her territory ; while all the 
towns which had remained faithful to Carthage wen 
condemned to share her fate. 

Thus happened what, happily, has rarely happened ii 
history before or since. An ancient seat of civilization 
together with the race which inhabited it, with its art 
and its sciences, its laws, its literature, and its religion, 
was swept away at a single stroke, leaving hardly 
wrack behindhand with it vanished the last rival whom 
Rome had to fear, the one state which ever met her on 
equal terms, and therefore alone stood between her and 
universal empire; the one possible check upon the evi 
/hich the decay of the republican spirit, the increase 
wealth, the abuse of conquest, and the temptations n 
absolute power were sure to bring in their train. It is a 
thrice melancholy picture. It is the second book of tl 
dEneid in stern and simple fact. The great Roman pc 
needed not to draw upon his imagination for a sing ; 
detail of his splendid picture of the fall of Troy. The 
burning and the slaughter, the crash of falling hous 
the obliteration of a wealthy and an ancient city whi i 
had held imperial sway for many, nay, for seven hundred 
years—it was all there, written in letters of blood and 


The Site of Carthage. 


261 


fire, in the record of his own country’s most signal 
achievement! It was a loss not to be replaced. The 
lerritory of Carthage, indeed, for the century or two that 
’he republic was yet to last, supplied Rome with corn for 
ler markets, and with wild beasts and gladiators for her 
:rena. It gave, in fact, to the populace their bread and 
their Circensian games, all that when the republic had 
fallen they would ever want, and all that they would 
ever have. A poor equivalent this for the mighty city, 
the queen of the Mediterranean and its islands, the 
explorer of the Ocean beyond, the nurse of commerce 
and colonization, the mother of Hamilcar Barca and 
Mago, of Hasdrubal and Hannibal! 

The curse of Scipio rested upon its site. Yet not many 
years afterwards Caius Gracchus, unmindful or, perhaps, 
resentful of it, and moyed doubtless by the noblest 
motives, proposed to relieve the wants of the poorer 
Roman citizens by planting six thousand of them on the 
spot. But African hyenas, it was said, tore up and scat¬ 
tered the boundary marks which had been laid down, 
thus demonstrating to the hostile Senate alike the efficacy 
of the curse and the guilt of the people’s friend who had 
set it at naught. The proposed colony of Junonia cost 
f s originator his noble life before he had done more for 
•t than give it its name. It was reserved for the greatest 
of the Romans, for Julius Cassar himself, some forty 
years after Caius Marius had so theatrically taken his 
seat amidst its ruins, to revive the project of Caius Grac¬ 
chus. His death anticipated this, as it anticipated other 
cosmopolitan projects of his imperial and ultra-Roman 
mind. But Augustus carried out with filial reverence 
this and other provisions of his uncle’s will, only attempt¬ 
ing, it is said, to evade the letter of Scipio’s curse by 
building his town not on, but near, the site of the Phoe- 


26 ? Rome and Carthage. 

nician city. He must have failed in this, for, as we have 
seen, the whole of the peninsula had been more or less 
covered by the original Carthage, its suburbs, its gardens, 
and its burial ground. Anyhow, the natural advantages 
of the spot overcame the curse and soon made the nev 
city the capital of Northern Africa and the headquarters 
alike of Roman civilization and of African Christianity. 
After connecting itself with the great names of Augustine 
and Tertullian and Cyprian—names and characters 
different indeed from those of their Phoenician prede¬ 
cessors—and passing through the hands of the Vandals, 
it fell under the sway of the new Rome, and “shed or 
received a last ray of lustre’’ from the great name of 
Belisarius. 

Finally, by a destiny stranger still, it was destroyed 
by the Arabs, a race nearly akin to its first founders. 
The hurricane of their invasion swept away all that 
remained of the city, and though the Arabs founded or 
developed at various times in other parts of Africa rich 
commercial or literary capitals, such as Cairo and Cair- 
wan, Fez, Tangiers, and Morocco, they did nothing for 
Carthage. A straggling village, indeed, sprang up later 
on its site and dragged on a wretched existence for some 
centuries, and at the present moment, by another caprice 
of fortune, the citadel of Carthage is occupied by a 
chapel dedicated to a French crusader, king and saint 
in one. But ever since the Arab chief Hassan gave, in 
A. D. 698, the Byzantine city to the flames, the memorable 
words in which the author of the "Decline and Fall 
has described Palestine as it has been ever since the 
Crusades, may, with at least equal truth, be applied to 
Carthage: “A mournful and a solitary silence has pre¬ 
vailed along the coast which had so long resounded 
with the world’s debate.” 


Interest of a visit to Carthage. 


263 


CHAPTER XX. 

CARTHAGE AS IT IS. 

It was early on the morning of April i, 1877, that we 
cast anchor off the Goletta, a tumble-down fort which 
commands, or does not command, the nar- 

Interest of 

row entrance to the Lake of Tunis, and found a visit to 
ourselves in full view of the bold promontory < ~' artha g e - 
and the low coast-line, the undulating hills and the fer¬ 
tile plain, which mark the site of ancient Carthage. It 
was a moment not easily to be forgotten, a moment into 
which the interests of half a lifetime—of half my lifetime 
at all events—seemed to be compressed. There was 
that tumult of feelings, that mixture of satisfaction and 
of unrest, of melancholy and delight, of enthusiasm and 
of disappointment, which it is, perhaps, not easy ade¬ 
quately to explain but which needs, I imagine, no ex¬ 
planation at all to anyone who has seen for the first time 
in his life a spot which has long filled a large place in 
his imagination ; to the poet or the scholar who has seen 
for the first time the Acropolis of Athens ; to the historian 
who has at last set foot in Rome ; to the pilgrim who, 
after traversing, perhaps half a continent, amidst burning 
deserts or eternal snows, has caught sight—his whole 
nature strung to the highest pitch of tension -of some 
storied mountain or some holy city, the goal of all his 
aspirations and his passionate religious yearnings, Mount 
Sinai or Mount Elburz, Kapalivastu or Benares, Mecca 
or Jerusalem. It is more, perhaps, than he has hoped 
ior, but it is also less. 


Quaesivit caelo lucem ingemuitque repertft. 


264 


Rome a?id Carthage. 


In a work of this kind, anything in the shape of * 
journal, even though it be a journal of a visit to the city 
of which it treats, would be obviously out of place. But 

Nature of ^ ma y not out 0 f place to gather up 
impressions within the compass of a single chapter some 

thence derived. , . 

ot the impressions made upon my mind, by 
what I saw of the site of Carthage, of its remains, and of 
its present inhabitants. First impressions of a place, it 
has been often said, may make up their freshness for 
what they lack in point of accuracy and completeness ; 
but I am not sure that my own record can lay claim to 
even this merit. If, in one sense, they are my first im¬ 
pressions, in another they are my ultimate conclusions ; 
and it may well be, therefore, that they may lack the 
freshness of the one without possessing the value or 
solidity of the other. Deep and varied though the inter¬ 
ests of my visit were, it seemed to me througfioutas though 
I was taking a last rather than a first view of the site of 
the city, and was driving home impressions which had 
been made long before rather than forming new ones. 
Be that as it may, I will endeavour to record some of 
them here, for what they may be worth. 

Everyone who has given even the most cursory atten¬ 
tion to the topography of Carthage knows what diametri¬ 
cally opposite views have been held re¬ 
specting it; and it was with a feeling of 
interest not unmixed with anxiety, that I took that first 
glance at the general outline of the place, which, if it 
proves nothing at all, may yet seem ominous or suggestive 
of the result. It might well be that on a personal 
inspection of the spot I might come to conclusions very 
different from those which I had drawn from books and 
maps, and which had hitherto seemed to harmonize best 
with the history of the final siege. I might be driven by 


Topography. 


Topography. 


265 


the evidence of my own eyes to agree with those who put 
the Byrsa where I had imagined the Megara, and the 
Megara where I had imagined the Byrsa, and transfer 
the harbours, the Taenia, the Forum, and all the thrilling 
operations of which they were the scene, from the south 
to the north of the city. Turn labor effusus : much at 
least of my labour would have been thrown away, anu 
it would only have remained for me to beat a retreat 
while it was still possible, and to make my views bend 
to the facts, since the facts would not bend to them. 
The critical moment came and it passed. Feeling that 
I could not be an altogether disinterested witness in the 
matter, I believe I put considerable strain upon myself 
to see if I could fall in with the views expresssed by Dr. 
Davis, the energetic excavator and explorer, as regards 
the position of the Byrsa, and the triple wall, and of 
Ritter or Mannert, as regards the position of the ports.* 
But I came to the conclusion that, on these particular 
points, the balance of the evidence lay strongly in other 
directions, and that the inferences on which I had based 
my account of Carthage were, on the whole, correct. 

But if the first view of the place, as seen from the 
deck of a steamer, is so far satisfactory, it must be ad- 

* Dr. Davis places the Byrsa on Burj Jedeed, a hill near the sea, 
considerably to the S. E. of the hill of St. Louis, while he throws 
back the triple walls to the isthmus behind the Megara Ritter 
identifies the Byrsa with Djebel Khawi or the Catacomb Hill on 
the N. W of the city, and necessarily therefore also places the 
Taenia and the artificial harbours in the same locality on the ground 
now occupied by the Salt Marsh. Mannert places the harbours 
much ,n the position which I have indicated in the accompanying 
plan of Carthage, but conceives the entrance to them and therefon 
also Scipio’s Mole to have been inside the Taenia; that is, not in 
the open gulf, but in the Lake of Tunis. 


266 


Rome and Carthage. 


mitted that in other respects it is somewhat disappoint¬ 
ing. There is nothing, at first sight, to delight or to 
charm ; there are no bold outlines, nothing, in fact, in 
the physical features of the spot to suggest the mighty 
part which it played in ancient history. The Byrsa is 
an ordinary-looking hill, scarped, it is true, in some 
portions, but anything but commanding in itself. There 
is no frowning rock—such as you cannot help picturing 
to yourself beforehand—like the Acropolis or the Aero- 
Corinthus, like Edinburgh or Stirling Castle ; nothing, ir 
fact, which could put to shame even the supposed Tar 
peian rock at Rome. Rough grass, acres of beans and. 
barley, and ploughed fields do not delight the eye: 
they are not naturally suggestive of anything beyond 
themselves ; moreover the whole thing lies or appears to 
lie within so small a compass. There does not seem 
room at first sight for the vast operations of the siege, 
for the myriad merchantmen and ships of war, for the 
teeming population who, we are told, and truly told, 
throve and trafficked here for centuries. A partial ex¬ 
planation of this, no doubt, lies in the fact that the 
distances are altogether foreshortened, and it is not till 
you begin to walk over the ground from the Goletta to 
the Byrsa, from the Byrsa to Cape Carthage, from Cape 
Carthage to the Necropolis, and so round the whole cir¬ 
cuit of twenty-three miles, that the first impression of 
want of space and want of dignity is even partially 
removed. 

Let me now, without attempting to adhere to any de¬ 
finite order of place or time, say a word or two on some 

of the spots which interested me most. I 
Goletta and had f e j t somewhat sceptical beforehand as 

the laema. 1 

to the existence of that extraordinarily 
shaped neck of land wh 'ch I had seen in the larger maps 


Djebel Khawi and the Necropolis. 267 

of Carthage, with its tiny opening now called the Goletta 
or gullet. My doubts on that score were set at rest at 
once, for, as I have said, we dropped anchor off it, and 
were rowed up the channel along which only a few 
boats could pass abreast. This was a good omen foi 
what was to follow, and by walking some half mile to the 
westward along the narrow bar of sand which cuts oft 
the Lake of Tunis from the outer sea, we found ourselves 
standing on the broadening ground whence Censorinus, 
as I believe, delivered his first, and Scipio his last attack 
on the doomed city. On one side of us was the land 
which owed its very existence to the operations of the 
siege, for it must have been from this point that Censori¬ 
nus threw those vast masses of soil and ballast into the 
lake which gave him standing room for his forces, and 
so enabled him to bring his gigantic battering rams to 
bear on the weak angle of the wall. On the other side 
of the bar was the spot from near to which Scipio must 
have begun to carry that cruel mole which was to cut 
off from the beleaguered citizens their last hope of relief 
from without. 

To the extreme north-west of the ground once occu¬ 
pied by the Phoenician city, is the promontory of Ras 
Ghamart, 200 feet high, and the line of rounded hills, 
called Djebel Khawi, which runs thence in _ , ,,,, 

J . , Djebel Khawi 

a southerly direction for the distance of a and the Ne- 
mile or so, is “ one vast Necropolis.” Every- cropolls - 
where, a few feet beneath the surface of the ground are 
labyrinths of low vaulted chambers, often communi¬ 
cating with each other or separated only by narrow walls 
of rock; perhaps the quarries from which the Punic city 
was originally hewn, certainly used afterwards as sepul¬ 
chres for its dead. They are now, for the most part, 
hidden from view or filled with rubbish ; and wild fig 


26S 


Rome and Carthage. 


tree which, as the Roman poet remarked, was able to 
cleave the costly marble sepulchres of Messala, pushes 
its sturdy roots in every direction through these humble 
tenements of the Phoenicians. 

All traces of the original occupants have long since 
disappeared, and the vacant space is often tenanted by 
the jackal and the hyena.* When the Romans had ex¬ 
hausted their fury on the city of the living, they turned 
their attention, as it would seem, even to this city of the 
dead. It was their practice not to bury but to burn 
their dead, and it is not likely that they used at first the 
vast Necropolis which they had rifled of its contents, for 
their own small cinerary urns. But when the Roman 
Carthage became the metropolis of Africa, and the 
head-quarters of African Christianity, the Pagan prac¬ 
tice of cremation was replaced by Christian burial, and 
the ancient mortuary chambers were filled, after the 
lapse of centuries, by new occupants. These, when the 
impetuous flood of Arab invasion had spread over the 
country, were, in their turn, dispossessed by marauding 
Bedouins. For centuries the Bedouins have ransacked 
them for any treasures to be found within them, and 
they visit them to this day for the chalk which they con¬ 
tain. Accordingly we are not surprised to hear that out 
of some hundred sepulchres, examined by Dr. Davis 
and M. Beule, only one contained a skeleton. In an¬ 
other was found a relic of even greater interest, though 
it belongs to the Vandal or the Byzantine rather than 
the Roman era, a representation on the rock of the 
seven-branched candlestick.! The seven-branched can¬ 
dlestick, carried off by Titus from Jerusalem to Rome, 
was, in the strange vicissitudes of human fortune, car- 

* Davis, Carthage, p. 472. 


f Ibid. p. 486. 


Sanctity of Semitic burying-places. 269 

ried off again from Rome to Carthage by the terrible 
Genseric, the lame Vandal king ; and so, probably, it 
comes about that the sacred ornament of the Jewish 
temple—the exact shape of which is known to all the 
world from the sculptures on the arch of Titus—has 
been found engraven also within a Phoenician sarcopha¬ 
gus at Carthage. Some of the sepulchral chambers 
measure twelve by fifteen feet, and contain as many as 
ten niches, or columbaria, hewn out of the solid lime¬ 
stone as receptacles for the dead.* 

With what deep pathos as one looks at Djebel Khawi 
—its hill-sides riddled, as they are, with myriads of 
Phoenician sepulchres—do the words of the Carthagin¬ 
ian legate Banno come back to the mind ! “ Kill,” re¬ 
plied he to the Roman consul who cruelly ordered the 
now disarmed and helpless Carthaginians to destroy 
their beloved city and build another ten miles from the 
coast, “ kill, if it be your good pleasure, all the citizens, 
but spare the city, spare the temples of the gods, spare 
the tombs of the dead. The dead, at least, can do you no 
harm; let them receive the honours that are their 
due.” f The appeal might have moved a heart of 
stone, but it touched no chord in the breast of the Ro¬ 
mans. 

Deep in the sanctuary of the human heart, civilized 
or uncivilized alike, lies the feeling of reverence for the 
last resting-place of the individual, the fam¬ 
ily, or the nation. For the tombs of their Sanctity of 

J burying-places 

fathers, even the Nomad Scythians told among the 

Darius, when he was wearied out by his Scnutic races ' 
vain pursuit of an enemy, who always fled before him 
and always eluded his grasp, that they would stand 

* See Beule, Fouilles a Carthage , p. 129 seq., and the plans of 
the sepulchres in the Appendix. J Appian, viii. c. 84. 

T 


270 Rome and Carthage. 

and fight to the death.* But nowhere, probably, does 
the feeling lie quite so deep as in the hearts of the va¬ 
rious branches of the Semitic race. The voice of the 
Phoenician Banno is the voice of human nature ; but 
in a more special sense it is the voice which seems to 
speak to us in each deed of heroism which marked the 
last agony of Carthage, and which does speak to us 
from each successive page of the sacred literature of the 
Hebrews who are next of kin to the Carthaginians. It 
is the voice of the patriarch himself that we seem to 
hear : “ Bury me with my fathers in the cave that is in 
the field of Machpelah which Abraham bought for a 
possession of a burying-place , there they buried Abra¬ 
ham and Sarah his wife; there they buried Isaac and 
Rebekah his wife, and there I buried Leah.” 

The other promontory which is included within the 
circuit of the ancient city, Ras Sidi Bu Said, or, as it is 
called in our maps, Cape Carthage, outtops 
^aid Sld * Bu R^s Ghamart by a hundred feet. It is of 
red sandstone, and is the most commanding 
eminence within the precincts. It is crowned at present 
by an Arab village of peculiar sanctity, so sacred that, 
as we were told, no Christian is allowed to sleep there. 
The venerable Sheikh of the village, however, courteous¬ 
ly allowed us to enter and to enjoy the superb view from 
the summit. It is inhabited by a large number of Mar¬ 
abouts or Muslim Saints, living and dead; men who, by 
their austerities, their theological learning, or their char¬ 
ity, have earned a reputation for sanctity, and have come 
to live where other saints have lived before them, and to 
lay their bones in death by the bones of those whose vir¬ 
tues they have emulated. 

By a curious caprice of fortune, or, may we not rather 


* See Stanley’s Jewish Church, vol. i. chap. 2, p 24. 


Scene of Misadventure of Mancinus. 271 

say, by a theological Nemesis, the Saint who is supposed 
to give to Sidi Bu Said its special sanctity is no less a 
personage than St. Louis of France himself. The crusad¬ 
ing king died in 1270 of a pestilence which broke out in 
his army near Tunis, as he was on his way to Egypt. 
His heart lies buried near Palermo, and his body rests in 
the sanctuary of the French kings at St. Denis; but his 
virtues and his sanctity are still a living power on the 
plains of Carthage. So widely were his virtues recog¬ 
nized among those whom he came to exterminate, that 
with true Muslim charity they believed, or wished to 
believe, thathehad died agood Muslim, and “the Village 
of the Saint’’ is believed, even to this day, to be blessed by 
his body, and by a special portion of his spirit. It is an 
homage, even if an all-unwitting homage, paid by his 
followers to the teachings of the Prophet, who told them, 
what Muslim and Christian have proved alike so apt to 
forget, that the God of Muslims and Christians is one.* 

It must have been near to this commanding eminence, 
and above the remains of the ancient sea gate which is 
still to be seen on the beach beneath, that „ 

Scene of mis- 

the incompetent legate, Mancinus, effected adventure of 
a landing with a small force during the final Mancinus - 
siege, hoping to take the town by assault, and it was 
from this spot, when entirely isolated, without a sufficiency 
of arms or of provisions, that he was rescued from total 
destruction by the prompt succour of Scipio. 

Scipio sent him off in disgrace to Rome, and we can 
hardly believe, what we are gravely told by a Roman 
writer, that he had the face to assert, in virtue of his 
very brief and very uncomfortable occupation of this 
one spot in the suburbs, that he had been the first Roman 

* Koran, Sura v. 73 : " Say unto the Christians their God and 
ou. God is one,’’ and cf Sura ii. 59 and v. 52, 53. 


272 


Rome and Carthage. 


to enter Carthage; that he caused pictures to be painted 
representing the city and the various assaults made 
on it by the Romans—in which his own, doubtless 
bore a conspicuous figure; that he exhibited them in the 
Forum to all comers with copious explanations; and that 
he became so popular thereby that, to the extreme dis¬ 
gust of Scipio, he was elected consul for the year which 
followed the fall of Carthage.* We can share Scipio’s 
disgust! but we feel as we stand upon the spot and look 
upon the red sandstone cliffs, the straggling cactus 
hedges, and the bare hill-sides, with perhaps a sedate 
Arab or two picturesquely grouped upon them, that we 
could pardon the impudence of Mancinus, if only one of 
those pictures had been preserved to us, or had been so 
described by any one of the eager multitude who 
thronged to look at them, as to enable us better to re- 
clolhe in our imagination the landscape with the walls 
and the towers, the palaces and the gardens, of the 
mighty city which must have lain full within his view. 

From Sidi Bu Said runs in a south-west direction, par¬ 
allel to the line of the coast, and at a distance of three- 
quarters of a mile from it, a broken line of hills which 
terminates abruptly in that which, since its purchase by 

TT „ „ 0 the French andthe erection of a small chapel 
Hill of St. 1 

Louis, the an- on its summit, bears also the name of St 

cient Byrsa. l 0U ; S- This hill, although it is in no way 
striking or precipitous, and although there are some dif¬ 
ficulties connected with the large number of fifty thous¬ 
and souls said by Appian to have taken refuge within its 
precincts, when the last hours of Carthage came, yet, 
unquestionably, dominates the plain, the harbours, and 
the isthmus behind it, and there can be no reasonable 


'* Pliny, Nat. Hist■ xxxv. 4, 7. Cf. Cic. Lcelius, xxv. 96. 


Gulf of Tunis and Dakhla Peninsula. 273 


doubt that it formed the Byrsa or citadel of the palmy 
days of Carthage. At all events, it was its most com¬ 
manding eminence. 

It is at a moderate distance from the coast, as the an¬ 
cient citadels almost invariably were. It lies, as Appian 
expresses it, “towards the isthmus” * which connected 
Carthage with the mainland, and, alone of all the hills 
within the circumference of ancient Carthage, it answers 
to the description of Strabo, as being “a brow sufficiently 
steep lying in the middle of the city, with houses on all 
sides of it.” f On this spot stood the famous temple of 
Esmun or /Esculapius. Under its protection the infant 
settlement grew up to maturity and to empire; against its 
fortifications discontented mercenaries and hostile Lib¬ 
yans, Sicilian Greeks, and Roman generals spent their 
strength, for centuries, in vain, and on its summit the 
last scene of the sad tragedy, the heroic death of Has- 
drubal's wife, is said to have been enacted. The view 
from the Byrsa is, therefore, one which, for its historical 
and tragic interest, if not for its intrinsic beauty, has few 
equals in the world. It may be well, therefore, taking 
the Byrsa hill as our central standpoint, to describe 
something of what we saw from thence or from points in 
its immediate neighborhood. 

To the south and east, almost beneath one’s feet, is 
the broad and beautiful gulf of Tunis, stretching away to 
the open Mediterranean between the far- 

, 1 T-1 ■ r-.w .... Gulf of Tunis 

famed Promontories of Mercury and Apollo, and Peninsula 
Beyond the gulf is the Peninsula of the ° f lhe r,akhla - 
Dakhla, whose majestic mountains—Hammam-el-Enf, 
the most commanding among ihem—by their shape, their 
silence, and their barrenness, recall what one has read 
of the “Alps unclothed,” as they have been well described, 

* Appian. viii. 95, eni tov av^evos. f xx. 9. 


^74 Rome and Carthage. 

of the Peninsula of Mount Sinai. Hidden from view 
behind the mountains at the end of this peninsula, and 
looking straight across towards Sicily, of which, in pre¬ 
historic times, it must have formed a part, is the Pro¬ 
montory of Mercury, sometimes called also the “ Fair 
Promontory,” the point which, in times of peace, was 
named by the proud and jealous republic as the ne phis 
ultra of all foreign—especially of all Roman—merchant¬ 
men, the point where Regulus halted his ships of war, 
where the greater Scipio first landed, and from which, 
with characteristic adroitness, he drew his first omen of 
success. 

To the west and north is a sandy plain, flanked by the 
Lake of Tunis, with its flamingo-haunted waters, and by 
Lake of Tunis the ancient city, whose glaring houses and 
and plain of whitened roof-tops, relieved a little by its 
Moorish mosques and minarets, still recall 
the name of “the white,” given to Tunis by Diodorus 
Siculus eighteen centuries ago.* The plain is dotted here 
and there by houses of the wealthy Tunisians, by olive 
plantations, by one or two solitary palm trees, and by 
huge hedges of the Barbary fig, whose sharp fleshy leaves 
afford sure protection against every animal except the 
camel. Part of it is under cultivation, and yields to its 
cultivators—if those who just scratch the surface of the 
earth may be so called—no longer, indeed, the hundred- 
and-fifty fold of Pliny’s time ; f but still in ordinary years 

* XX. 9. 

f Pliny, Hist. Nat. xvii. 3, cf. v. 3. Sir Richard Wood, K. C. 
M. G., Her Majesty’s Consul-General at Tunis, to whose hospita¬ 
lity and kindness, as well as to that of his family, we owe much c 
the success and comfort of our stay there, told us of exception^ 
instances within his knowledge in which even Pliny’s estimate oi 
the fertility of the soil had been largely exceeded. 


The Aqueduct. 


275 


a large return. Large tracts of country which we know 
were, till very lately, covered with forests, are now en¬ 
tirely bare. Trees are cut down but new ones are never 
planted. Even the olive plantations seem to be dying 
away for want of tending or renewal. There is nothing, 
therefore, to help the thirsty soil to retain even that 
modicum of rain from heaven which falls upon it, while 
scientific irrigation with the help of the rivers, which was 
carried to such a wonderful pitch in ancient times alike 
by the Phoenicians and by the Romans, is now entirely 
neglected. What wonder, then, if in seasons of excep¬ 
tional drought Nature revenges herself and that the crops, 
having no deep roots, wither away, while the inhabitants 
perish by hundreds ? The cultivated portions of the 
plain, at certain times of the year, swarm with quails, 
vast numbers of which are snared in nets by the natives 
or knocked down by sticks when they are tired out—as 
was the case when we were there—by their annual mi¬ 
gration. Wandering over the pasture-lands may be seen 
the flocks and herds of the Arabs and the long lines of 
their camels. Here and there are their black tents, 
which may be shifted at convenience. But some of the 
natives, passing gradually from the nomadic to the agri¬ 
cultural stage, have found a more permanent, if not a 
more congenial abode, in the numerous subterranean 
cisterns or magazines which the forethought of their more 
civilized predecessors constructed; and the domestic 
animals of the Arabs are found stabling in the very 
buildings which may once, perhaps, have sheltered the 
Carthaginian elephants. 

Stretching right across the plain, “ like the bleached 
vertebrae of some gigantic serpent,” as they have been 
well described by Sir Grenville Temple, may be seen 
great blocks of masonry, the remains of the noble Ro- 


276 


Rome and Carthage. 


man aqueduct,* which brought from the mountains of 
Zaghouan (Mons Zeugitanus) and Djebel Djougar 

(Mons Zuccharus)—from a distance, that 
The aqueduct. c ■ , • , ,, . , 

is, of over sixty miles — those perennial 

streams of fresh water which not only supplied the in¬ 
habitants of the city, but sufficed to irrigate its suburbs 
and its gardens, and made much even of the interven¬ 
ing arid country to smile as the Garden of the Lord f It 
was the handiwork of that Roman emperor who has 
left behind him traces of his truly imperial passion for 
building and for travelling in every province of his vast 
empire. The aqueduct of Carthage is not unworthy, ei¬ 
ther in the magnificence of its design or in the complete¬ 
ness of its execution, of the man who could rear at 
Rome the mighty mass of buildings once called “ Ha¬ 
drian’s Pile,” and at Tivoli that museum of art which is 
still known as his “ Villa ; ’’ who, at one end of his do¬ 
minions, could carry a wall from sea to sea, from the 
mouth of the Tyne to the Solway Firth, still called Ha¬ 
drian’s Rampart, and at another could complete the 
colossal temple of the Olympian Zeus, which had been 
begun by Pisistratus seven centuries before, and had 
waited seven centuries to find anyone who had the 
means and the will to finish it. 

The arches of the aqueduct which were once visible 
from the Byrsa have been destroyed, not by the hand 
of time, but by the barbarism of the inhabitants. The 
basements alone remain, and we saw bands of Arabs 

* Procopius, Bell. Van. ii. 1, rov oxer6v agioOearov ovra of ff 
Tyv tt 6 ?uv eiarjye to vrfup. Perhaps even more " worthy of ad¬ 
miration ” it still is in its decay and ruin. 

t 11 has been calculated that the aqueduct conveyed seven mil¬ 
lions of gallons of water a day, or eighty-one gallons per second! 
See Playfair's Travels in the Footsteps of Bruce, p. 131. 


The Aqueduct. 


277 


in the act of carrying away such blocks even of these 
as their pickaxes could break off, to build a new palace 
for the Bey of Tunis. Further away man has been 
more merciful, or, at all events, less powerful to injure, 
and its arches, rising to the height often of sixty, and 
sometimes, it is said, of a hundred and twenty-five feet,* 
march across the valleys from hill to hill in stately pro¬ 
cession. Those who are fond of birds may be inter¬ 
ested to know that a large owl, of a species which I 
had never seen before, was building its nest on one of 
the highest of these arches, while on the other side of 
the same arch a raven was sitting on its young in undis¬ 
turbed repose, and its mate flew croaking round—a cu¬ 
rious mixture of associations, ornithological and reli¬ 
gious : the bird of Pallas and the bird of Odin nestling 
together 00 what is doubtless the handiwork of those 
master builders of antiquity, the Roman worshippers 
of Jupiter and Juno, but which supplied the wants of 
those who, after the lapse of centuries of foreign con¬ 
quest, still clung desperately to their ancestral worship 
of Baal-Moloch and Astarte ! f The channel which 
conveyed the water from Zaghouan sometimes pene¬ 
trates deep beneath the ground, sometimes runs along 
the top of single arches, or of tiers of them, one above 

* Davis, i. 460. 

f The deep channels full of water mentioned by Appian as inter¬ 
secting the Megara in every direction seem to necessitate an arti¬ 
ficial conduit from a distance even in the time of the Phoenician 
city: Appian, viii. 117, rd M eyapa .... o^eroif Badcan tidarof 
noiKikoir re Kai gkoXioI f naranXeurv fjv. In like manner the 
description of the country round Carthage given by Diodorus (xv. 
8) as it appeared to the soldiers of Agathocles, implies a vast system 
of tanks or cisterns, as well as scientific irrigation. tto'aIcjv vdarut 
iioxertvofikvuv Kai it dura tottov dpdeovTuv. 


278 


Rome and Carthage. 


the other. It is broad enough and deep enough for a 
man to walk upright within it, and in many parts it is 
still so perfect as to be utilized for the water-supply 
which modern enterprise has, within the last few years, 
brought to Tunis from the same distant and perennial 
fount. 

Far away to the north of the plain we could see the 
hill, on the top of which the citadel of Utica was 
perched, the parent city and the one trusted 
ally of Carthage, the point where the Ro¬ 
mans so often landed in their invasions of Africa, and 
whence they must have caught the first glimpse of the 
city which they had so perfidiously doomed to destruc¬ 
tion. 

But if the view from the Byrsa is impressive from 
what it contains within it, how infinitely more impressive 
is it from what it can only suggest! It was long, indeed, 
before we could fully realize, what we knew well enough 
before we went there, that on the ground immediately 
beneath our feet so many cities—Phoenician, Roman, 
Vandal, Byzantine—had been founded, had risen to 
opulence and power, and had vanished again, leaving 
barely a trace of their existence behind. A lively Ger¬ 
man, indeed, a resident in Tunis, whom we met on 
board the steamer on our way to Africa, could hardly 
suppress his surprise or his merriment, perhaps even his 
contempt, when we told him that we were actually 
coming all the way from England to see Carthage. 
“ Carthage ! c'est rien ! ” he exclaimed ; and nothing, 
indeed, in one sense of the word, there was; but in 
another, and perhaps a truer sense, how very much ! 

One trace, however, of the ancient city there is which 
one would have thought that even our matter-of-fact 
German friend would hardly have called “ nothing.” 


The smaller Cisterns. 


279 

About a quarter of a mile from the Byrsa and nearer to 
the sea, is a huge mass of masonry embedded in the 
soil, the low vaulted roofs of which, rising side by side 
in pairs only a few feet above the level of the hillside 
which has been excavated around them and are actually 
below its level where it has been undisturbed, look like 
the graves of some gigantic prehistoric race. “ There 
were giants in the earth in those days,” were the words 
which rose involuntarily to the mind ; but these vaulted 
roofs turned out to be the coverings of the vast reser¬ 
voirs which stored up water for the teeming 
population of the city. They are eighteen Js t eri^ aller 
in number ; the masonry and cement are 
still all but perfect. Each reservoir is nearly one hun¬ 
dred feet long by twenty wide, and the water still stands 
in many of them to the depth of seventeen feet. A 
narrow gallery, hollowed out of the face of the hill be¬ 
side them, enables the visitor to pass beneath the surface 
along their whole length, and to realize the silence and 
the solitude which reign supreme around this, the one 
remaining monument of the vanished ancient city. 

I say advisedly of the ancient city, for though the fac¬ 
ings of the cisterns and perhaps nearly everything which 
meets the eye may, very possibly, be Roman, yet, as M. 
Beule, one of the highest authorities on ancient archi¬ 
tecture, as well as an indefatigable excavator, has pointed 
out, the plan on which they are constructed is undoubt¬ 
edly more ancient, and the Roman architects have only 
copied their Punic predecessors. It seems likely, I would 
rather say, that they have only repaired their work. If 
the aqueduct is admitted to be Roman, it will follow that 
a huge collection of rain-water cisterns would have been 
an absolute necessity in the Punic city. Nor is it easily 
credible that the Romans would have taken the trouble 


28 o 


Rome and Carthage. 


to destroy what lay deep hidden beneath the ground 
We have seen that they did not destroy the Necropolis, 
they only pillaged and profaned it. Why then should 
they have destroyed, at an infinite expenditure of labour, 
the huge reservoirs which in that arid country would be 
of untold value to the scattered cultivators of the ground, 
or to their flocks and herds, and which did not disturb 
that dead level to which it was their pleasure and their 
practice to condemn alike the house or the city of an 
offender ? * The low vaulted roofs of the cisterns were 
probably then covered with soil, to lower the temperature 
and to prevent evaporation, and the Roman plough might 
therefore have well been driven by the Roman destroyers 
almost inadvertently across them. M Beule well points, 
out, moreover, that the definition which exactly hits off 
the series of undoubtedly Punic fortifications which he 
has disinterred beneath the Byrsa, hits off with equal 
precision the range of cisterns themselves. Each con¬ 
sists of a “series of chambers equal and parallel, and 
opening on a common corridor.” f 

Behind the Byrsa and beyond the precincts of the an¬ 
cient city proper, there is another group of cisterns of 
still larger proportions. These probably belong to the 
Roman city, and they were fed not by rain water but by 
the aqueduct of which they formed the termination. 

They are called the “large cisterns” to dis- 
CisternY 26 tinguish them from the other group, which 
certainly could never be called "small” ex¬ 
cept by comparison with them. They are said by the 
traveller Shaw to have been in his time twenty in number, 

* Cf. Livy, iv. 16, for the /Equimaelium or Mselian level; the 
place on which the house of Sp. Maslius, the presumed traitor, had 
stood. 

f Beule, Fouilles , p. 61. 


Destruction of Carthage. 


281 


each measuring not less than a hundred feet in length by 
thirty in breadth. Gigantic as they are, they are not so 
imposing either in associations or in appearance as the 
smaller group which I have just described, partly because 
they do not lie so well together, and partly because the 
deposits and accumulations of successive ages have filled 
them to within a few feet of the roof. Even so, they are 
of considerable value to the inhabitants; for, giving shel¬ 
ter as they do to a whole settlement of Arabs with their 
wives and children, their stores of grain, their agricultural 
implements, and their domestic animals—which are 
never few in number—they form in themselves the whole 
hamlet of Moalka, home and homestead in one! 

All the other buildings of the city, whether Punic or 
Roman, have long since disappeared. Whole hamlets 
and towns have been built out of their materials. We 
saw huge slabs of Carthaginian marble embedded in 
the palaces of Tunisian nobles ; and some have found 
their way even into Italian and Spanish cathedrals. In¬ 
numerable small fragments, however, which were not 
thought worth carrying away, still linger on the site of 
the city. The ground beneath one’s feet teems with 
them ; nay, rather it is composed of them. Bits of tes¬ 
sellated pavement, of porphyry, of the famous Numidian 
marble—green, white, and red—everywhere meet the 
eye, or are turned up by the spade and the plough¬ 
share. These belong, I believe, almost exclusively to 
periods later than that of the Phoenician city. The Ro¬ 
mans did their work of destruction on their hated rival 
too thoroughly. For seventeen days its ruins burned,* 
and at the end not one stone was left standing on an¬ 
other, at all events above the surface of the ground. 


* Floras, ii. 17, iSk 


282 


Rome and Carthage. 


The Manes of old Cato must have been more than sat¬ 
isfied by the way in which his countrymen carried out 
his grim resolve. 

The work of excavation has been attempted in recent 
times, with such means as were at their disposal, by Dr. 

Davis, an English, and by M. Beule, a 

Excavations of p re nch archaeologist, whose names I have al- 
Dr. Davis. 0 

ready had occasion to mention. Dr. Davis, in 
a series of explorations, which he has carried on for many 
years, partly at his own expense, and partly at that of 
the English Government, has disinterred a large number 
of marbles and mosaics, many of which, of course, be¬ 
long to the Roman period. But he has also opened out to 
view the basement of a large temple to Baal, which, if 
it is not Punic itself, is in all probability—as we know 
the Romans in their new-born enthusiasm for the city 
of Dido and Venus made a point of doing—built upon 
the exact site, and, as nearly as possible, after the model 
of its Punic predecessor ; and, what is more important 
still, he has discovered a very large number, over 120, 
of genuine Punic inscriptions. That some of the mosaic 
pavements also found by him belong to the Phoenician 
city, we may not unreasonably conclude, when we are 
told that he has sometimes found three successive layers 
of mosaics placed one above the other at considerable 
intervals ; that the cement in which the lower stratum 
was laid was of a wholly different character from those 
of the upper; that it was easily detached from the 
mosaics and was very friable in itself, having lost all its 
adhesive power by long lapse of time.* 

M. Beule, on the other hand, who is well known for 
his excavations in the Acropolis at Athens, expended 


* Davis, p. 202. 


Excavations of M. Beule. 283 

much labour in sinking deep shafts, some of which 
happily still remain open, at various points 
near the circumference of the Byrsa, and F, xc , : l va fi ons ol 
he was fortunate enough to bring to light 
considerable remains of the great triple wall so accu¬ 
rately described by the ancients. 

There he came upon the foundation of the outer wall, 
which, as we have already stated, was six feet thick and 
forty-five feet high, strengthened by towers at intervals 
which rose twenty feet higher still. There, before his 
eyes, were the basements of the semi-circular chambers 
—the shape so much affected by the Phoenicians as we 
see in their remains at Malta and at Gozo—which con¬ 
tained stabling for three hundred elephants below, and 
for four thousand horses above; and there too, at the 
depth of fifty-six feet below the present surface of the hill, 
he worked his way through a layer of ashes five or six 
feet thick, some of which still blackened the hand which 
touched them, and were mixed with half-charred pieces 
of wood, with small bits of iron twisted into strange con¬ 
tortions by the fury of the Roman flames which had 
attempted to consume them, with fragments of pottery 
and glass—the invention of the Tyrians—and with 
projectiles which must, all too probably, have been 
collected together in the citadel when the last assault was 
imminent, to be thrown thence by the Balearic slingers, 
or to be launched from the very catapults which had been 
equipped for service by the free-will offerings of the long 
hair of the frenzied Carthaginian matrons.* 

Some of these remains are preserved in a small muse¬ 
um near the chapel of St. Louis, and one of the projec¬ 
tiles P&re Roger, the custodian of the chapel, was kind 


•Beule, p. 55. 


28 4 


Rome and Carthage. 


enough to give me, when he found that I was specially 
interested in the history and topography of Carthage. It 
is heavy for its size, and is made of terra-cotta, that is to 
say, of clay which had been moulded into an oval form, 
and then baked to a red heat, exactly answering to the 
description given by Caesar of the acorn-shaped bolts 
used by the Romans, and hence called “ acorns.” 
Ferventes fusili ex argil/a glandes , * he says in his 
‘‘Gallic War,” and this is one of precisely the same 
shape and material used by the Phoenicians. 

There is one feature of the ancient city which in spite 
of all I had heard and read about it I was surprised to 
find in such perfect preservation. It will doubtless be 
remembered that ancient Carthage had two docks or 
harbours, both the work of human hands—one oblong 
for the use of merchant vessels, the other circular for the 
use of vessels of war—and our pleasure may be imagined 
when on suddenly reaching the summit of the Byrsa 
from behind we saw them both immediately below us, 
each, of course, much diminished in size by the ever- 
shifting soil, and by the debris of the buildings which 
had perished around them, but each preserving its 
characteristic shape. There, before our eyes, was the 
circular war-harbour, once surrounded by 220 different 
docks, each fronted by two Ionic marble pillars. There 
was still the island in the middle, on which, in the days 
when Carthage was the mistress of all known seas and 
islands, was the residence of her lord high admiral, the 
spot from which he could superintend all the operations 
of that busy hive of industry, and could issue his orders 
by the sound of the trumpet; and there was the inter¬ 
vening strip of land, narrower now than then, owing to 


* Caesar, Bell Gall., v. 41. 


Oriental Character of Tunis. 285 

the encroachment of the waves, looking across which— 
himself unobserved the while—he could see all that went 
on in the open sea and concert his measures against any 
state which dared—and few ever dared—to measure her 
strength against that of the Oueen of the Ocean. And 
there, too, was something—though I believe it is really 
much more modern—which looked like the traces of the 
outlet opened by the beleaguered Carthaginians in the 
days of their distress, when they were thus able, for the 
time at least, to laugh to scorn all the labours of Scipio. 

We bathed close to the supposed outlet. The water 
was deliciously warm, early though it was in the month 
of April, and as far out as we could swim, we could rest 
once and again on the blocks of masonry which once 
formed the quays, or the sea wall, or it may be even the 
buildings, of the Phoenician city, but which are now 
encrusted by shell-fish and seaweeds, and have long 
been covered by the waves. 

It will readily be believed that the first and great 
charm of a visit to Carthage is the religio loci, the place 
itself, and the associations which cluster round it; but a 
second and hardly inferior attraction to my mind, is the 
character of the people who inhabit the plains where 
Carthage once was. Comparatively few travellers have 
as yet visited Cothon or the Byrsa. Of tourists in the 
ordinary sense of the word, there are none ; and Tunis, 

I have reason to believe, is at the present 

r Oriental 

day the most Oriental of all Oriental towns. character 

The wave of Western civilization or its 
counterfeit, which has done so much to transform Con¬ 
stantinople and Cairo, nay even Bagdad and Damascus, 
has not yet swept over Tunis. A few shopkeepers, 
indeed, and most of the voituriers are Italians, while 
the boatmen and the porters who quarrel for the honour 


u 


286 


Rome and Carthage. 

of carrying your portmanteau, and nearly carry you off 
in the process, are Maltese, who, it is said, do most of 
the crime, and certainly seem to carry it in their for¬ 
bidding countenances. But beyond these outliers of 
civilization, and the few Europeans attached to the con¬ 
sulates, there are no sights visible, and there is no 
influence felt, but those of the East. 

And what a mixture of Eastern races there is, and 
what gorgeous costumes ! Grave and dignified Osmanli 
Turks with their pride of race, their scarlet fezes, and 
their yellow slippers; Jews with their bagging panta¬ 
loons and their blue coats and head-dresses ; Arabs with 
their long beards, their white turbans and burnouses, 
and their many-coloured tunics; descendants of the 
prophet, “Grand Scherifs ’’ as they are called, rejoicing 
in their green robes and green turbans—the size of which 
is not unusually exactly proportioned to the degree of 
their sanctity and their dirtiness; swarthy Moors from 
the desert, and Negroes from the Soudan—not such 
sickly and cringing hybrids as you see in Oxford Street, 
clad in European dress and aping European manners— 
but real downright Negroes, half-naked, black as ebony; 
all jostling one against the other, and all rejoicing in the 
brotherhood of Islam. 

The streets of Tunis are narrow and unpaved, and 
are often very dirty. The houses—as in their counter¬ 
parts, the three narrow streets leading from 
Streets of t he Forum to the Byrsa in ancient Car- 

lunis. J 

thage—often all but meet across them over¬ 
head, and few of them have any pretensions to archi¬ 
tectural beauty, yet, as you walk up and down, you 
have endless and ever-varying subjects of interest and 
amusement. Every man and woman you meet, and 
still more every shop or stall you pass, with its owner 


Streets of Tunis. 


287 


sitting in the middle of it cross-legged and barefooted in 
dignified repose, waiting patiently till it pleases Allah to 
send him a customer, is a study in itself. 

You seem to have the “Arabian Nights ” before your 
very eyes. There, for instance, is the barber’s shop 
with a bench all round it, on which sit rows of customers 
divested of their turbans and their fezes, listening to the 
barber’s chatter and each waiting till his turn comes to 
have his head operated upon. There is the Court where 
justice—Eastern justice, of course, I mean—is adminis¬ 
tered by a Turkish Pasha, who sometimes despatches 
the cases brought before him at the rate of two a min¬ 
ute, but to the equal satisfaction, as it would seem, of 
both plaintiff and defendant. There is the prison, the 
doors of which are never closed but guarded only by 
one shabby policeman armed with a blunderbuss which 
looks as if it would never go off, and a yataghan which 
is so rusty that you would think it could never leave its 
scabbard ; the prisoners squatting complacently inside, 
smoking, or knitting, or wrapped in contemplation, and 
all submitting quietly to their incarceration, because it, 
too, is the will of Allah—or of the Bey. There is the 
Arab coffee-house, where grave and sedate revellers sit 
almost in the dark playing draughts and sipping strong 
black coffee, of course without sugar and without milk, 
from minute saucerless cups. There is the College, 
founded by the Prime Minister Kheir-eddin—a Turk 
and a Pasha and yet a genuine reformer, who is loved 
and honoured the whole country through *—where little 
boys learn to repeat by rote the Koran from end to end 
at the top of their voices before they understand a word 

* See his book on “ Necessary Reforms of Mussulman States:’’ 
Athens, 1874. 


288 


Rome and Carthage. 


of its meaning, while some reverend Moullah sits in the 
midst of the circle and, holding his wand of office, 
chastises them gently, not if they are not quiet, but— 
oh ! what a paradise of boys !—if they do not make 
noise enough. The higher classes, meanwhile, are an¬ 
swering questions in Euclid, cr arithmetic, or geography, 
describing by memory, for instance, the sea passage 
from St. Petersburg to Stamboul through the Cattegat, 
and the Skaggerack, and all the rest of it, with a pre¬ 
cision and a readiness in which I am not quite sure that 
all, even in the highest forms in English schools, would 
be able to keep pace with them. There again are the 
mosques, visited five times a day by throngs of wor¬ 
shippers, who reverently put off their shoes before they 
enter them, and into which Christians—since the Euro¬ 
pean element in Tunis is happily small and unaggres- 
sive,—rightly forbear to claim an entrance. There are 
the minarets, from which, at stated intervals throughout 
the day and night, and, above all, at daybreak, comes 
that strange and beautiful call to prayer - the very same 
which is heard from Sierra Leone to Sumatra, and from As- 
trakan to Zanzibar—“ Allahu Akbar, God is most great; 
prayer is better than sleep, prayer is better than sleep ; 
there is 710 God but God, and Mohammed is his prophet." 
And there, once more, are the caravanserais, filled at 
evening with groups of camels kneeling in a circle, 
their old-world heads pointed inwards, sullenly crunch¬ 
ing the heap of green barley which their owners with 
characteristic improvidence have gathered for them, and 
tended all night long by some swarthy Arab squatting 
on his haunches. All these and many more such sights 
were crowded into the few days that we were enabled 
to spend in Tunis and its neighboihood. 

And when you pass the city wall—for Tunis, it must 


The Neighborhood of Tunis. 289 

be made known to all, is a fortified city, and possesses 

something which may by courtesy, indeed, 

be called a wall, but which would, I verily The Neighbor 

J hood of 1 unis. 

believe, like the walls of Jericho, tumble 
down, en masse, at the bare report of a heavy gun,— 
when you pass the gates and find yourself in the country, 
what a delight, irrespective of the Roman remains which 
are so thickly strewn over it, at Utica, for instance, and 
at Uthina, at Hippo Zarytus and at Tysdrus, to see, not 
the Turk, or the Moor, or the Negro, or the Jew, interest¬ 
ing, though each is in his way, but, what is still more in¬ 
teresting, the genuine Bedouin of the desert. 

There you have, not the “Arabian Nights” but what 
is better still, the Book of Genesis itself before your eyes. 
There, for instance, is the gaunt figure of the Arab 
against the clear horizon as from the hill top, wiappedin 
his white blanket, he stands like Joseph or like Moses 
watching his flocks, or as he walks magnificently—for 
who has a walk that can be named with that of the 
Arab?—over the plain. There is the encampment of 
black tents, the very same in colour and materials, in 
shape and in size, as that which heard the laugh of Sarah, 
or witnessed the last long sleep of Sisera. There is the 
venerable Sheik, the Abraham of his tribe, with his long 
white beard, his grave courtesy, and his boundless hos¬ 
pitality ; there his dark-eyed princess, with tattered gar¬ 
ments perhaps and bare feet, but richly decorated with 
glass beads and amulets, with ear-rings, which hang not 
through but round the ear, and with ankle-rings which 
are often of silver and richly chased; such jewelry, 
doubtless, as struck the fancy of the grasping Laban, and 
helped to win the heart of his sister to a stranger in a 
far distant country. There, again, is a young Rebekah, 
a damsel of olive complexion but of strange beauty, 


2go 


Rome and Carthage. 


going with her pitcher to the well- Within the tent are 
stone jars of water of patriarchal make and shape, cur¬ 
tains and coverlets of camel’s hair, churns for butter, 
kids’ skins, and sheep skins, while near its entrance is 
the rude circular stone oven about the size of a basin, 
within which the scanty fuel may be husbanded to the 
utmost and yet a cake may be baked hastily and well for 
the tired wayfarer. Round about the encampment roam 
the Bedouin’s wealth, the only wealth he possesses, 
his sheep and his oxen, his goats and his dogs, his mules 
and his asses, while here and there, crossing the plains, 
may be seen those ships of the desert, the long lines of 
his camels, each one, perhaps, carrying a whole house 
and household on his back, each grunting and grumbling 
as he shambles along, every line in his ungainly figure, 
and every feature of his countenance, even his gentle 
eye, looking like what it really is, a never-ceasing, but, 
alas, a bootless protest against the advance of civiliza¬ 
tion. 

And, then, what lavish hospitality you meet with every¬ 
where, what courtesy, what simplicity of heart and life! 
On one occasion we stopped for a few moments before a 
Bedouin encampment, and after partaking of their sim¬ 
ple fare, their milk and their butter, from a dish which 
was not a lordly one, only because they had none such 
in their possession, we were about to depart when one of 
their number was sent off to a point half a mile away, 
and returned bringing on his shoulders a present which, 
it will be believed, it was equally difficult for us to refuse 
or accept—a live lamb. They would not take a refusal, 
still less would they take any return for it 

The Arab is, in a sense in which it can hardly be said 
of any European nation, an inborn gentleman. If he is 
not the noblest, he is yet, in my opinion, a,truly noble 


Characteristics of the Arab. 


291 


specimen of humanity. He is, and herein lies one ol 
his chief charms, as unchangeable as the 

Character- 

deserts in which he has his home. What he istics of the 
was in the time of Abraham and Moses, Arab - 
that he was in the time of Christ, and that, in spite of the 
vast religious impulse given him by Mohammed, which 
carried him in one sweep of unbroken conquest over 
half the world, he is, in all essentials, down to the pre¬ 
sent day. He is, indeed, such a living bit of antiquity 
himself that we are disposed to make rather more allow¬ 
ance for the thoughtless way in which, unconscious of 
his past and careless of his future, he destroys, and has 
for centuries past destroyed the remains of a less ven¬ 
erable antiquity than his own which lie scattered so 
thickly around him. But I must forbear to enter fur¬ 
ther here upon the fascinating subject of the Arab; for 
though he forms one of the chief attractions of a visit 
to Carthage and its neighbourhood, I have treated of 
him fully elsewhere, and his history and characteristics 
lie beyond the proper scope and object of this vol¬ 
ume. 

It was a revelation, doubtless, to the Roman senators 
that the splendid figs which Cato showed them grew in 
a country only three days’ sail from Rome ; 
but I am inclined to think it was a greater 
revelation to me that the remains of the great imperial 
city, whose history had so long occupied my thoughts, 
lay within six days’ journey of England, and that they 
could be enjoyed, if not to the full, at least, I hope, to 
some good effect, within the narrow limits of an Easter 
holiday. 


Conclusion. 










INDEX 


AST 

CHRADINA, 179, 180. 
Adherbal, Carthaginian ad¬ 
miral, 79; defeats Claudius at 
Drepanum, 80; causes the de¬ 
struction of the third Roman fleet, 
82. 

Adis, battle of, 58, 62. 

Adrumetum, 10, 222, 225. 

JE gatian Islands, 9 ; battle of, 92. 
/Egusa, 92. 

Africa, 9. 

invasion by Romans, 56. 

Romans driven from, 66. 

Scipio invades, 210. 
researches in, 265. 

Agathocles, 21, 30, 31, 56.. 
Agrigentum, 15, 36; besieged, 37, 
captured, 38. 

Aleria, 47. 

Alps, 117; Hannibal’s passage of, 
118, 121,124. 

Anapus, marshes of, 35, 180. 
Antigonus, 114. 

Antiochus, the Great, 109, 232 ; de¬ 
feated at Magnesia, 233. 

Aosta, 124. 

Apennines, no, 129,133, 135. 
Appian, 239. 

Archimedes, 179 ; death of, 181. 
Argyrippa, 145. 

Ariminum, 112, 127, 129, 136. 

Arno, 134. 

Arpi, 145 ; Hannibal's quarters at, 
175 . 

Airetium, 133, 135. 

As, 86. 

Asina, Cn. Corn. Scipio, consul, 66. 
Aspis, 55. 

Astarte, or Tanith, 17, 277. 


BYR. 

Atilius, A , consul, 66 
Aufidus, 153, 155. 

Autaritus, 98. 

B AAL-MOLOCH, 7, 16, 63, 241, 
277. 

Bagradas, 10, 58, 68, 223. 

Balearic Islands, 9, 19, 206, 220. 
Balearic slingers, 139. 

Barcine gens, or, “ Lion’s brood,” 14, 
84, no, 161. 

Barcine faction, 217. 

Battles of, Adis, 56, 62. 

/Egatian Islands, 92. 

Cannae, 158. 

Drepanum, 80. 

Ecnomus, 50. 

Ibera, 183. 

Lake Trasymene, 140. 

Metaurus, 197. 

Mylae, 45. 

Panormus, 6q. 

Telamon, in. 

Ticinus, 127, 

Trebia, 130. 

Zama, 224. 

Beneventum, 146. 

Berbers, 10. 

Beul6, M., researches of, 268, 279, 283. 
Boetis, 108. 

Boii, no, in. 

Bomilcar, 179. 

Borghetto, 138. 

Bostar, a Carthaginian, 73. 
Bovianum, 27. 

“ Bride of the Sea/’ 66. 

Bnrtians, put to death, 192. 
Bruttiuin, 42, 221. 

Byrsa, 6, 251, 257, 265, 268, 272. 

2 93 





294 


Index. 


CAR. 

ARTHAGE, topography, 5 ; re¬ 
lation to Sicily, 6; lew records 
of, 7 ; spread of influence on the 
Western Mediterranean, 8; con¬ 
stitution, 11 ; the 100 judges of, 
12; oligarchy of, 13; social life at, 
14 ; wealth and agriculture of, 15 ; 
military spirit, 16; religion, 17; 
proper names, 17; literature, 17; 
mercenaries, 18; the poor of, 20; 
sources of weakness, 21 ; con¬ 
trasted with Rome, 23; first war 
with Rome, 29; backwardness of, 
36 ; naval supremacy of, 39; pros¬ 
perity and short-sightedness of, 55 ; 
terms of Regulus rejected by, 59 ; 
“ Bride of the Sea/’ 66; sends 
embassy to Rome, 71 ; negligence 
at, 76; armies of, 88; supreme 
efforts o r , 91; makes peace with 
Rome, 94; gains and losses by 
the First Punic War, 95; sore 
distress of, 98; mercenaries revolt 
against, 97 ; war and peace parties 
at, 103 ; war declared against 
Ro-ne, 113; news of victories of 
Hannibal sent to, 134; lack of zeal 
at, 169; lose Spanish possessions, 
206; threatened by Scipio, 210; 
last chance of, 220 ; makes peace 
with Rome, 226; destroys her 
fleet, 227 ; topography of, 239 ; 
changes by nature and man, 240 ; 
siege of, 240; fortifications, 241; 
harbours, 242; third war wi h 
Rome, 244 ; “ peace at any price ” 
offers of, 245 ; grief of, 246; scene 
at, 247 ; besieged by Romans, 
247 ; repulse of Romans, 248 ; new 
outlet of, 253 ; closely besieged by 
Scipio iEmilianus, 255; final as¬ 
sault, 256; desperate resistance, 
256 ; set on fire, 257; fate of, 259 ; 
ruins of, 263; impressions, 264 ; 
topography, 265 ; modern re¬ 
searches, 266; plan of, 274; aque¬ 
duct of, 276; smaller cisterns, 
279 ; large cisterns, 280. 

Camerina, 65. 

Cannae, 153; battle of, 158; results 
of the battle, 160. 

Canaanites, 1, 16. 

Canusium, 153, 161, 163. 

Capua, 171 ; siege of, 185 ; capture 
of, 190 ; cruelty of the Romans at, 
190. 

Carthaginian proper names, 18. 

Carthalo, Carthaginian admiral, 82, 
245 - 


ETR. 

Casilinum, 177. 

Catana, 89. 

Cato, 238, 250. 

Catulus, C. Lutatius, consul, 91 ; 
defeats Hanno at ALgatian Islands, 
92, 93; makes peace with Hamil- 
car, 94. 

Caudex, A. Claudius, 32, 33, 34. 

Censorinus, consul, 245, 246, 249, 251. 

Chevelu Pass, 120. 

Claudius, P.,79; defeated at Dre- 
panum, 80; sister of, 81 ; punished 
82. 

Clypea, 55, 59, 63, 64, 65, 250. 

Columna Rostrata , 46. 

Consentia, 221. 

Corsica, 4, 6, 9, 47, 59; seized by 
Hamilcar Barca, 102. 

Corinth, 233. 

Cortona, 138. 

Corvus, 44, 45, 46. 

Cothon, 6, 244. 

Cremona, hi, 128. 

Crispinus, 192. 

Croton, 221. 

Cumae, 89. 


D AKHLA, 273. 

Davis, Dr., researches of, 265, 
268, 283. 

Diecfilus, 43. 

Dionysius, the tyrant, 30. 

Djebel Khawi, 267,269. 

Dora Baltea, 127. 

Drepanum, 48, 75, 79 ; battle of, 8o f 
84, 90, 91. 

Duillius, defeats the Carthaginians 
at Mylae, 45; honours bestowed 
upon, 46. 

Duum viri navales , 41. 


E bro, 112, n6,117. 

Ecnomus, battle of, 50. 
Egesta, 47, 48. 

Elba, 9. 

Elinga, 206. 

Embole , 43. 

Embolon, 52. 

Epipolae, 179. 

Epirus, 28. 

Eratosthenes, 9. 

Erbessus, 37, 38. 

Ercte, captured by Hamilcar, 85. 
Eryx, Mount, 83; captured by Paul- 
lus, 84 ; captured by Hamilcar, 70. 
Etruscans, conquest of, 25, 116. 




Index. 


2 95 


HAN. 

F ABIUS Q. MAXIMUS, IIJ 
policy of, 145 ; called the Lin¬ 
gerer, 146; continued inaction of, 
147; fails to trap Hannibal, 148; 
instructs Minucius, 149 ; divides 
the command with Minucius, 150; 
great services of, ib.; restores con¬ 
fidence after Cannae, 162 ; shield ot 
Rome, 172; consul, 174, 176; ad¬ 
vice to Scipio, 208. 

Faesulae, 134, 137. 

Flaccus, M. Fulvius, 32. 

Flaccus, Q. Fulvius, consul, 186. 
Flaminia, Via, 111,112. 

Flaminius, C-, no; captures Medio¬ 
lanum, in ; character of, 134 ; dis¬ 
liked by the patricians, 135 ; elected 
consul, 136; defeated at Trasy- 
mene, 140; death of, 141. 

Fulvius, Cn., praetor, 190, 191. 

G ADES, 18, 106, 206. 

Gallic tribes join Hannibal, 

128. 

Gaul, 117. 

Gela, 15. 

Geronium, 149, 153, 155. 

Gerusia, or council of ancients, 12. 
Gescon, 97, 98. 

Giuliano, St., 83. 

Goletta, 266. 

Gracchus, T. Sempronius, 174, 175 ; 
promises freedom to the armed 
slaves, 176. 

“ Great Plains,” 217. 

H AMILCAR, 206, 215. 

Hamilcar, a Carthaginian, 73. 
Hamilcar Barca, 75, 84 : greatness of, 
87; plans, 88; achievements, 89; 
siezes Eryx, 90; magnanimity 94, 
95; makes peace with Rome, 96 ; 
his patriotism, 99 ; crosses to Spain, 
105 ; character and death, 107. 
Hamilcar, defeat and death at Hi- 
mera, n. 

Hamilcar; a Carthaginian general, 
48, 52 ; defeated at Ecnomus, 53. 
Hannibal, son of Hamilcar, 108; 
his vow, icxp; besieges Sagun- 
tum, 112; his surrender demand¬ 
ed, 113; his preparations for 
the expedition to Italy, 114 ; deter¬ 
mines to goby land, 115; size of 
h : s army, 116; passes the Rhone, 

117; defeat of the Gauls, 117; pas¬ 
sage of Alps selected, 118: diffi¬ 
culties encountered, 120; crosses the 
Alps, 120; speech of, 122; in Italy, 


HER. 

125; defeats Romans at Ticinus, 
127; advances, 128; defeats Ro¬ 
mans at Treb ; a, 130; passes the Ap¬ 
ennines, 133; passes the marshes. 
134 ; marches through Etruria, de¬ 
feats the Romans at Trasymene, 
140; overruns Italy, 144; rests his 
army in Picenum, 145; marches 
into Campania, 146; escapes from 
Fabius, 148 ; defeats the Romans at 
Cannae, 164; unbroken success of, 
166 ;_nis character, 167; his genius, 
169 ; foiled at Nola, 173 ; winters at 
Capua, 173 ; his wide projects, 174 ; 
at Tifata, 175; tide turns against, 
176 ; gains Tarentunv, 177; renewed 
successes of, 184; attempts to re¬ 
lieve Capua, 186; marches on 
Rome, 187; before Rome, 188; his 
superiority in the field, 191 ; defeats 
Fulvius, ib.; messengers from 
Hasdrubal captured, 195 ; recalled 
to Africa, 221; lands in Africa, 222 ; 
defeats Massinissa, 222 ; defeated 
at Zama, 224; escapes to Adrume- 
tum, 225; advises peace, 226; as 
a statesman, 234 ; driven into exile, 
235 ; wanderings and death, ib. 

Hannibal, son oi Hamilcar, 77 ; rein¬ 
forces Lilybaeum, 77. 

Hannibal, son of Lisco, 37, 39 ; de¬ 
feated by Duillius, 47, 66. 

Hanno, Carthaginian admiral, 34. 

Hanno, Carthaginian general, 34; 
sent to Sicily, 38, 52 ; defeated at 
Ecnomus, 53; sails for Carthage, 
55; defeated by Catulus at iEga- 
tian Islands, 92; enmity to Hamil¬ 
car Barca, 99, 104, 116, 117. 

Hasdrubal, son of Gisco, 204, 206, 
216; condemned to death, 219. 

Hasdrubal, son- n-law of Hamilcar, 
108. 

Hasdrubal, grandson of Massinissa, 
248. 

Hasdrubal, son of Hamilcar, 114; 
encounters the Romans, 183, 184; 
advances from Spain, 193 ; in Gaul, 
194; in Italy, 195; defeated by 
Nero, 107; death, 198. 

Hasdrubal, Carthaginian general, 
248 ; usurps authority, 252 ; cruelty, 
253; cowardice, 258; his wife, 258. 

Hasdrubal, Carthaginian general, 
68; defeated at Panormus, 69. 

Hasdrubal. Carthaginian general, 16a 

Hastati, 223. 

Heraclea, 28, 38, 50, 82. 

Hercules, pillars of, 104. 




296 


Index. 


MAN. 

Herdonia, T9. 

Hermaean promontory, 6, 55, 75. 
Herodotus, 5, 17. 

Hiero, 31, 36, 79, 82. 

Hieronymus, 174, 175, 180. 

Himera, 11, 15, 48. 

Hill of St. Louis, 272. 

Himilco, 76, 78, 179, 180. 

Himilco Phameas, 249,251. 

Hippo Zarytus, 10, 98, 100, 250. 
Horace, 126. 

TAPYGIA, 185. 

J. Ibera, 183. 

Iberians, 108 
Is6re, valley of, 119. 

Island of the Allobroges, 119. 

Italy, Gallic war in, no; Hannibal 
in, 118. 

J UDGES, The hundred, 12, 47, 
234 - 

K ARCHEDON, 5. 

Keleustes , 4 , 44. 
Kirjath-Hadeschath, 5. 

L ake trasymene, battle of, 

140. 

Laelius, 199, 209, 224. 

Latins, conquest of, 25. 

Leptis, 10. 

Libyans, 55. 

Libyssa, 236. 

Liguria, 36; joins Hannibal, 128. 
Lilybaeum, 29, 36, 50, 66, 68; s : ege 
of, 75 ; relieved, 77; threatened l>y 
Carthaginians, 163. 

Liparean Islands, 9. 

Lucca, 134. 

Livy, 109, 162, 190, 219, 222, 223 
Livius, M., 194, 196, 197. 

Locri, 34, 85, 221. 

Lombardy, 128. 

Lipari, 59. 

Lucanians, 116. 

M AGO, brother of Hannibal^ 130, 
132, 134, 157, 161; returns to 
Carthage, 161; in Spain, 204; re¬ 
called to Africa, 220; death of, ib. 
Mago, family of, 15. 

" a Shofete, 18. 

Maherbal, 141, 157, 161. 

Malta, 4, 9 

Mamertines, 29, 31, 35, 101. 

.Vl.imilius, Q., consul, 37. 
jManilius, consul, 245, 248, 251. 
Manlius, Q., 37. 

Manlius, L., 52, 56. 


OST. 

Marca, 134. 

Marcellus defeats the Gauls at Tela¬ 
mon, in, 172; in Sicily, 178; 
besieges Syracuse, 179; captures 
Syracuse, 180; spoils Syracuse, 181; 
death of, 192; Hannibal's treat¬ 
ment of, 193. 

Marcinus, 252, 271. 

Marsalia, 116. 

Massinissa, 211, 217, 218; routs 

the Carthaginian cavalry at Zama, 
224; king of Numidia, 228, 244; 
death of, 249. 

Ma&saesylians, 211. 

Massylians, 211. 

Matho. 97, 98. 

Mediolanum, 111. 

Megara, 6. 

Melcartn, 17, 106. 

Melicertes, 17. 

Mercenaries, 21; treatment of, 97; 
revolt of, 97, 100; destroyed, 101. 

Messana, straits of, 65,95. 

Messana, 29, 31, 50. 

Metagonitcz tirbes, 106. 

Metapontum, 191, 221. 

Metaurus, battle of, 197. 

Metellus, Cecilius, 69 ; defeats Has- 
drubal at Panormus, 70. 

Minucius, Marcus, 146; success of, 
149 ; co-dictator, 140 ; beaten by 
Hannibal, 150; deatn of, 16. 

Monte Pellegrino, 85. 

Murviedro, 112. 

Mummius, 233. 

Mylae, battle of, 45, 47, 52. 

Mylitta, 17. 


N aples, 175. 

Naraggara, 223. 

Narnia, 195. 

Nasica P. Cornelius Scipio, 244. 
Naval tactics, 43. 

“ armaments, 49. 

Neapolis, 34. 

Necropolis, 267. 

Nepheris, 255. 

Nero Caius, praetor, 186. 

Nero C. Claudius, 194, outgenerals 
Hannibal, 196 ; defeats Hasdrubal 
at Metaurus, 197 ; barbarism of, 198 
New Carthage, 108, 115, 116, 166; 

taken by Scipio, 205. 

Nola, 172, 175. 

Numidia, 19; cavalry of, 38, 120, 128. 


O CTACILIUS, M., 35. 

Ortigia, 189. 

Ostia, 230. 



Index. 


297 


RAS. 


SCI. ' 


P ACHYNUS, 36, 65, 83. 

Panormus, 48; Romans take, 
66; battle at, 70; Hamilcar lands 
at, 85. 

Passignano, 138. 

Paullus, L. /Emilius, consul, 152,153, 
154 ; defeated at Cannae, 160; death 
of, 161. 

Paullus L. Junius, consul, 82, 83, 84, 
86 . 


Pavia, 127. 

Paenulus, 8. 

Peace negotiations, 219. 

Pera, M. Junius, Dictator, 163. 

Periplus , 20, 43. 

Perseus, 233. 

Perugia, 139. 

Philip, 175. 

Phoenicians, characteristics of, 1; 
commercial enterprise, 2; size of 
territory, 3 ; found Carthage, 5. 
Phileni, 19. 

Phintias, 50. 

Picenum, 145. 

Pisa, 116. 

Piso, Consul, 252. 

Pityusian Islands, 9. 

Placentia, 111,127, 128, 132, 195. 
Plautus, 8. 

Pliny, 15, 86. 

Po, no, in, 112, 127. 

Polybius, 38, 50, 52, 56, 63, 73,83, 90, 
94, 101, in, 119, 133, 137, 196, 251, 
259 - 

Postumius, L., 37. 

Principes, 223. 

Prosbole, 43. 

Prusias, 236. 

Punic faith, 109, 168. 

Punic wars, first, 20; end of, 94; 
second, 112 ; end of, 227; third, 244; 
end of, 259. 

Pulcher, A. Claudius, consul, 186 
Puteoli, 176. 

Pydna, 250. 

Pyrenees, 116, 117. 

Pyrrhus, war with, 28; discomfiture 
of, 29. 


R AS SIDS BU SAID, 270. 

Regulus, M. Atilius, 52; de¬ 
feats Hanno at Ecnomus, 53, 54; 
invades Africa, 56; defeats the 
Carthaginians at Adis, 58 ; offers 
terms to the Carthaginians, 59 ; 
defeated at Adis, 62 ; embassy to 
Rome. 71; death, 72 ; wife of, 74 ; 
her cruelty, 74. 


Rhegium, 30, 32. 

Rhodian, mercenary, 77 ; baffles the 
Romans, y8 ; is captured, ib. 

Rhodian ship, used as a model by 
Romans, 91. 

Rhone, 116, 119, 126. 

Rome, 23; compared with Car¬ 
thage, 23 ; advancement, 27 ; war 
with Pyrrhus, 28; and Carthage 
face to face, 29; political questions, 
33; first fleet, 39; difficulties in 
creating a fleet, 41 ; naval affairs 
ib . fleet sails, 43 ; joy over first naval 
victory, 46; attacks Sardinia and 
Corsica, 47; victory at Ecnomus, 52; 
efforts of Rome, 64; destruction of 
Roman fleet, 65; destruction of sec¬ 
ond Roman fleet, 67 ; destruction of 
elephants at, 71; destruction of 
third Roman fleet, 83; despondency 
at, ib. ; during the mercenary war, 
102 ; seizes Sardinia and Corsica, 
ib. ; defeats the Gauls, no ; Senate, 
126; news of Trasymene at, 142; 
great exertions of, 152; news of 
Cannae, 162; greatness of, 165; 
great excitement of, 174 ; condition 
of, 231 ; in the East, 232; joy at, 
over capture of Carthage, 259. 

Roman Legion, 28; character dete¬ 
riorated, 229. 

Roquemaure, 119. 

Rubicon, no. 


S ACRED BAND, 16. 

Saguntum, 112. 

Salapia, 177. 

Samnium, 146. 

Sardinia, 4, 5, 59, 67, 102. 

Sardinia, Island of, 4, 9, 101. 
Sardinians for sale , 230. 

Scipio, P. Cornelius, 126; defeated at 
Ticinus, 128; successes in Spain, 
183 ; defeat and death, 184. 

Scipio, C., 126; defeat and death, 
184. 

Scipio, P. Cornelius, Africanus, son 
of P. Cornelius, 128, 199 ; early 
history, 200; character and in¬ 
fluence, 201; captures New Car¬ 
thage, 204 ; elected consul, 207 ; in 
Sicily, 209; invades Africa, 210; 
rebukes Massinissa, 218; modera¬ 
tion of, 219 ; defeats Hannibal at 
Zama, 224 ; returns to Rome, 227 ; 
death of, 237, 




298 


Index. 


TEM. 

Scipio, P. Cornelius, ./Emilianus, 249 ; 
250; consul, 252; attacks on Car¬ 
thage, 253 ; mole, 253 ; final assault 
on Carthage, 256 ; takes Carthage 
by storm, 257 ; destroys Carthage, 
2 59 - 

Scipio, L. Cornelius, epitaph of, 48. 

Selinus, 15, 69. 

Sempronius, consul, 127,129 ; defeated 
at Trebia, 130. 

Servilius, Cn., 133, 135, 141. 

Shaw, researches of, 280. 

Shofete, 13, 18. 

Sicily, 6; a battle-field, 30; Car¬ 
thaginians driven from, 95; war in, 
178. 

Sidon, 1. 

Siculus, Diodorus, 73, 274. 

Silpia, 206. 

Sophonisba, 212, 217 ; dnnKS poison, 
218. 

Spain, 24; Phoenician settlements in, 
9 - 

Spendius, 97, 98, 100, toi . 

Spcletium, 144. 

Spolici opivia> 111. 

Strabo, 273. 

SufFetes, 11, 12. 

Syphax, 184, 211, 217; fall of, 219. 

Syracuse, 31, 34, 35 ; siege of, 37; cap¬ 
ture, 38 ; threatened by Carthagin¬ 
ian fleet, 163 ; besieged by Marcel- 
lus, 179; captured by Marcellus, 
180; fate of, 181. 

Syrtis, 67. 

Syssitia, 14, 15, 16. 

T l ^®NIA, 248, 249, 254, 266. 

Tagus, 108, 112. 

Tarentaise, 120. 

Tarentines, 28, 34.. 

Tarentum, 34, 133, 177 ; captured by 
Hannibal, 184; besieged by Fa- 
bius, 192. 

Tartessus, 106. 

Taurini, 127. 

Telamon, battle of, 111. 

Telesia, 146. 

Temple, Sir Grenville, researches of, 
275. 


ZAM. 

Tiber, 144. 

Trasymene, battle of Lake, 140. 
Thurii, 191. 

Ticinus, battle of, 127. 

Tifata, 175. 

Trebia, battle of, 130. 

Tripolis, desert of, 10. 

Triton, 10. 

Triarii, 50, 223. 

Timoleon, 30, 37. 

Tunis, 58,97, 99, 101; gulf of, 273 ; ori¬ 
ental character, 285 ; streets of, 286. 
Tycha, 179. 

Tyndaris, 52. 

Tyre, 1; merchants of, 3, 11, 17, 106 


MBRIANS, 116. 

Utica, 5. 10,98, 99, loo, 246, 
260, 278. 


\ 7 ALERIUS, M., consul, 35. 

V Valerius, Q., praetor, 92. 
Varro, P. Terentius, consul, 152, 
154 ; divides command with Paul- 
lus, zb.; defeated at Cannae, 160, 
163, 166. 

Valerius, Q., praetor, 92 ; at battle of 
./Egatian Islands, 93. 

Velia, 34. 

Venusia, 16. 

Venus Coelestis, 17. 

Verbanus, lake of, 127. 

Volscians, 26. 

Vulturnus 156, 173. 


W AR, the truceless, 100, 101. 
“ White rock,’' 121. 


X ANTHIPPUS, 60; the com- 
mander of Carthaginian army 
61 ; defeats Regulus at Adis, 62. 


Z ACYNTHUS, 112. 

Zama, 223; battle of, 224. 










' The volumes contain the ripe results of the studies of men u its 
are authorities in their respective fields .”— The Nation. 


EPOCHS OF HISTORY 


EPOCHS OF 
ANCIENT HISTORY 


EPOCHS OF 
MODERN HISTORY 


Eleven volumes, i6mo, 
each $1.00. 


Eighteen volumes, i6mo, 
each $1.00. 


The Epoch volumes have most successfully borne the test of 
experience, and are universally acknowledged to be the best series 
f historical manuals in existence. They are admirably adapted in 
form and matter to the needs of colleges, schools, reading circles, 
-nd private classes. Attention is called to them as giving the 
.tmost satisfaction as class hand-books. 


Noah Porter, President of Yale College. 

“The ‘ Epochs of History’ have been prepared with knowl¬ 
edge and artistic skill to meet the wants of a large number of 
readers. To the young they furnish an outline or compendium. 
To those who are older they present a convenient sketch of the 
heads of the knowledge which they have already acquired. The 
outlines are by no means destitute of spirit, and may be used with 
great profit for family reading, and in select classes or reading clubs. ” 

Charles Kendall Adams, President of Cornell University. 
“A series of concise and carefully prepared volumes on special 
eras of history. Each is also complete in itself, and has no especial 
connection with the other members of the series. The works are 
all written by authors selected by the editor on account of some 
especial qualifications for a portrayal of the period they respectively 
describe. The volumes form an excellent collection, especially 
adapted to the wants of a general reader.” 

The Publishers will supply these volumes to teachers at SPECIAL 
NE T RA TES, and would solicit correspondence concerning 
terms for examination and introduction copies. 

CHARLES SCRIBNERS SONS, Publishers 

153-157 Fifth Avenue, New York. 







THE GREAT SUCCESS OF 
THE SERIES 


is the best proof of its general popularity, and the excellence of 
the various volumes is further attested by their having been 
adopted as text-books in many of our leading educational institu¬ 
tions. The publishers beg to call attention to the following list 
comprising some of the most prominent institutions using volumes 
of the series: 


Smith College, Northampton, Mass. 
Univ. of Vermont, Burlington, Vt. 
Yale Univ., New Haven, Conn. 
Harvard Univ., Cambridge, Mass. 
Bellewood Sem., Anchorage, Ky. 
Vanderbilt Univ., Nashville, Tenn. 
State Univ., Minneapolis, Minn. 
Christian Coll., Columbia, Mo. 
Adelphi Acad., Brooklyn, N. Y. 
Earlham Coll., Richmond, Ind. 
Granger Place School, Canandaigua, 
N. Y. 

Salt Lake Acad., Salt Lake City, Utah. 
Beloit Col., Beloit, Wis. 

Logan Female Coll., Russellville, Ky. 
No. West Univ., Evanston, Ill. 

State Normal School, Baltimore, Md. 
Hamilton Coll., Clinton, N. Y. 
Doane Coll., Crete, Neb. 

Princeton College, Princeton, N. J. 
Williams Coll., Williamstown, Mass. 
Cornell Univ., Ithaca, N. Y. 

Illinois Coll., Jacksonville, Ill. 


Univ. of South, Sewaunee, Tenn. 
Wesleyan Univ., Mt. Pleasant, la. 
Univ. of Cal., Berkeley, Cal. 

So. Car. Coll., Columbia, S. C. 
Amsterdam Acad,, Amsterdam, 
N. Y. 

Carleton Coll., Northfield, Minn. 
Wesleyan Univ., Middletown, Mass. 
Albion Coll., Albion, Mich. 
Dartmouth Coll., Hanover, N. H. 
Wilmington Coll., Wilmington, O. 
Madison Univ., Hamilton, N. Y. 
Syracuse Univ., Syracuse, N. Y. 
Univ. of Wis., Madison, Wis. 

Union Coll., Schenectady, N. Y. 
Norwich Free Acad., Norwich, Conn. 
Greenwich Acad., Greenwich, Conn. 
Univ. of Neb., Lincoln, Neb. 
Kalamazoo Coll., Kalamazoo, Mich. 
Olivet Coll., Olivet, Mich. 

Amherst Coll., Amherst, Mass. 

Ohio State Univ., Columbus, O. 

Free Schools, Oswego, N. Y. 


Bishop J. F. Hurst, ex-President of Drew Theol. Sem. 

“ It appears to me that the idea of Morris in his Epochs is 
strictly in harmony with the philosophy of history—namely, that 
great movements should be treated not according to narrow 
geographical and national limits and distinction, but universally, 
according to their place in the general life of the world. The 
historical Maps and the copious Indices are welcome additions 
to the volumes.” 




EPOCHS OF ANCIENT 
HISTORY, 


A SERIES OF BOOKS NARRATING THE HISTORY OF 
GREECE AND ROME, AND OF THEIR RELATIONS TO 
OTHER COUNTRIES AT SUCCESSIVE EPOCHS. 

Edited by 

Rev. G. W. Cox and Charles Sankey, M.A. 

Eleven volumes, i6mo, with 41 Maps and Plans. 

Sold separately. Price per vol., $1.00. 

The Set, Roxburgh style, gilt top, in box, $11.00. 

TROY—ITS LEGEND, HISTORY, AND 
LITERATURE. By S. G. W. Benjamin. 

“ The task of the author has been to gather into a clear 
and very readable narrative all that is known of legendary, 
historical, and geographical Troy, and to tell the story of 
Homer, and weigh and compare the different theories in tne 
Homeric controversy. The work is well done. His book is 
altogether candid, and is a very valuable and entertaining 
compendium.”— Hartford Courant. 

“As a monograph on Troy, covering all sides of the ques¬ 
tion, it is of great value, and supplies a long vacant place in 
our fund of classical knowledge.”— N. Y. Christian Advocate. 

THE GREEKS AND THE PERSIANS. By 

Rev G. W. Cox. 

“It covers the ground in a perfectly satisfactory way. 
The work is clear, succinct, and readable.”— New York 
Independent. 

“ Marked by thorough and comprehensive scholarship and 
by a skillful style.”— Congregalionalisl. 

“It would be hard to find a more creditable book. The 
author’s prefatory remarks upon the origin and growth of 
Greek civilization are alone worth the price of the volume.’ 
—-Christian Union. 



EPOCHS OF ANCIENT HISTORY 


THE ATHENIAN EIVI PI RE—From the Flight 
of Xerxes to the Fall of Athens. By Rev. 
G. W. Cox. 

“ Mr. Cox writes in such a way as to bring before the 
reader everything which is important to be known or learned; 
and his narrative cannot fail to give a good idea of the men 
and deeds with which he is concerned.”— The Churchman. 

“ Mr. Cox has done his work with the honesty of a true 
student. It shows persevering scholarship and a desire to 
get at the truth.”— New York Herald. 

THE SPARTAN AND THEBAN SUPREMA¬ 
CIES. By Charles Sankey, M.A. 

“ This volume covers the period between the disasters of 
Athens at the close of the Pelopenesian war and the rise of 
Macedon. It is a very striking and instructive picture of the 
political life of the Grecian commonwealth at that time.”— 
The Churchman. 

“ It is singularly interesting to read, and in respect to 
arrangement, maps, etc., is all that can be desired.”— Boston 
Congregationalist. 

THE MACEDONIAN EMPIRE—Its Rise and 
Culmination to Death of Alexander the 
Great. By A. M. Curteis, M.A. 

“A good and satisfactory history of a very important period. 
The maps are excellent, and the story is lucidly and vigor* 
ously told.”— The Nation. 

“ The same compressive style and yet completeness of 
detail that have characterized the previous issues in this 
delightful series, are found in this volume. Certainly the art 
of conciseness in writing was never carried to a higher or 
more effective point.”— Boston Saturday Evening Gazette. 

f* ^ The above five volumes give a connected and complete 

history of Greece from the earliest times to the death of 
A lexander. 



EPOCHS OF ANCIENT HISTORY 


EARLY ROME—From the Foundation of the 
City to its Destruction by the Gauls. By 

W. Ihne, Ph.D. 

“ Those who want to know the truth instead of the tra¬ 
ditions that used to be learned of our fathers, will find in be 
work entertainment, careful scholarship, and sound sense.' — 
Cincinnati Times. 

“ The book is excellently well done. The views are those 
of a learned and able man, and they are presented in this 
volume with great force and clearness .”—The Nation. 

ROME AND CARTHAGE-The Punic Wars. 

By R. Bosworth Smith. 

“ By blending the account of Rome and Carthage the ac¬ 
complished author presents a succinct and vivid picture of 
two great cities and people which leaves a deep impression. 
The story is full of intrinsic interest, and was never better 
told ."—Christian Union. 

“ The volume is one of rare interest and value .”—Chicago 
Interior. 

“An admirably condensed history of Carthage, from its 
establishment by the adventurous Phoenician traders to its 
sad and disastrous fall .”—New York Herald. 

THE GRACCHI, MARIUS, AND SULLA. By 

A. H. Beesley. 

“ A concise and scholarly historical sketch, descriptive of 
the decay of the Roman Republic, and the events which paved 
the way for the advent of the conquering Caesar. It is an 
excellent account of the leaders and legislation of the repub¬ 
lic .”—Boston Post. 

“ It is prepared in succinct but comprehensive style, and is 
an excellent book for reading and reference.”- -New York 
Observer. 

“ No better condensed account of the two Gracchi and the 
turbulent careers of Marius and Sulla has yet appeared.”— 
New York Independent. 



EPOCHS OF ANCIENT HISTORY 


THE ROMAN TRIUMVIRATES. By the Very Rev. 
Charles Merivale, D.D. 

“ In brevity, clear and scholarly treatment of the subject, 
and the convenience of map, index, and side notes, the 
volume is a model.”— New York Tribune. 

“ An admirable presentation, and in style vigorous and 
picturesque.”— Hartford Couranl. 

THE EARLY EMPIRE—From the Assassina¬ 
tion of Julius Caesar to the Assassination 
of Domitian. By Rev. W. Wolfe Capes, M.A. 

“ It is written with great clearness and simplicity of style, 
and is as attractive an account as has ever been given in 
brief of one of the most interesting periods of Roman 
History.”— Boston Saturday Evening Gazette. 

“It is a clear, well-proportioned, and trustworthy perfor¬ 
mance, and well deserves to be studied.”— Christian at 
Work. 

THE AGE OF THE ANTONINES—The Roman 
Empire of the Second Century. By Rev. 

W. Wolfe Capes, M.A. 

" The Roman Empire during the second century is the 
broad subject discussed in this book, and discussed with 
learning and intelligence.”— New York Independent. 

“ The writer’s diction is clear and elegant, and his narra¬ 
tion is free from any touch of pedantry. In the treatment of 
its prolific and interesting theme, and in its general plan, the 
book is a model of works of its class.”— New York Herald. 

“ We are glad to commend it. It is written clearly, and 
with care and accuracy. It is also in such neat and compact 
form as to be the more attractive.”— Congregaiionalist. 

The above six volumes give the History of Rome from 
the founding of the City to the death of Marcus Aurelius 
Antoninus. 



EPOCHS OF MODERN 
HISTORY. 

A SERIES OF BOOKS NARRATING THE HISTORY OF 
ENGLAND AND EUROPE AT SUCCESSIVE EPOCHS 
SUBSEQUENT TO THE CHRISTIAN ERA. 

Edited by 

Edward E. Morris. 

Eighteen volumes, i6mo, with 74 Maps, Plans, and Tables. 
Sold separately. Price per vol., $1.00. 

The Set, Roxburgh style, gilt top, in box, $18.00. 


THE BEGINNING OF THE MIDDLE AGES- 
England and Europe in the Ninth Century. 

By the Very Rev. R. W. Church, M.A. 

“A remarkably thoughtful and satisfactory discussion of 
the causes and results of the vast changes which came upon 
Europe during the period discussed. The book is adapted to 
be exceedingly serviceable.”— Chicago Standard. 

“At once readable and valuable. It is comprehensive and 
yet gives the details of a period most interesting to the student 
of history.”— Herald and Presbyter. 

“ It is written with a clearness and vividness of statement 
which make it the pleasantest reading. It represents a great 
deal of patient research, and is careful and scholarly.”—• 
Boston Journal. 

THE NORMANS IN EUROPE—The Feudal 
System and England under the Norman 
Kings. By Rev. A. H. Johnson, M.A. 

“ Its pictures of the Normans in their home, of the Scan¬ 
dinavian exodus, the conquest of England, and Norman 
administration, are full of vigor and cannot fail of holding the 
reader’s attention.”— Episcopal Register. 

“ The style of the author is vigorous and animated, and he 
has given a valuable sketch of the origin and progress of the 
great Northern movement that has shaped the history of 
modem Europe .”—Boston Transcript. 



EPOCHS OF MODERN HISTORY 


THE CRUSADES. By Rev. G. W. Cox. 

“ To be warmly commended for important qualities. The 
author shows conscientious fidelity to the materials, and such 
skill in the use of them, that, as a result, the reader has 
before him a narrative related in a style that makes it truly 
fascinating.”— CongregationaZist. 

“ It is written in a pure and flowing style, and its arrange¬ 
ment and treatment of subject are exceptional.”— Christian 
Intelligencer. 

THE EARLY P LA N TAG EN ETS—Their 
Relation to the History of Europe; The 
Foundation and Growth of Constitutional 
Government. By Rev. W. Stubbs, M.A. 

“Nothing could be desired more clear, succinct, and well 
arranged. All parts of the book are well done. It may be 
pronounced the best existing brief history of the constitution 
for this, its most important period.”— The Nation. 

“Prof. Stubbs has presented leading events with such fair¬ 
ness and wisdom as are seldom found. He is remarkably 
clear and satisfactory.”— The Churchman. 

EDWARD III. By Rev. W. Warburton, M.A. 

“ The author has done his work well, and we commend it 
as containing in small space all essential matter.”— New York 
Independent. 

“ Events and movements are admirably condensed by the 
author, and presented in such attractive form as to entertain 
as well as instruct.”— Chicago Interior. 

THE HOUSES OF LANCASTER AND YORK 
—The Conquest and Loss of France. By 

James Gairdner. 

“ Prepared in a most careful and thorough manner, and 
ought to be read by every student.”— New York Times. 

“ It leaves nothing to be desired as regards compactness, 
accuracy, and excellence of literary execution.”— Boston 
Journal. 



EPOCHS OF MODERN HISTORY 


THE ERA OF THE PROTESTANT REVO¬ 
LUTION. By Frederic Seebohm. With Notes, on 
Books in English relating to the Reformation, by Prof. 
George P. Fisher, D.D. 

“For an impartial record of the civil and ecclesiastical 
changes about four hundred years ago, we cannot commend a 
better manual.”— Sunday-School Times. 

“All that could be desired, as well in execution as in plan, j 
The narrative is animated, and the selection and grouping of t 
events skillful and effective.”— The Nation. 

THE EARLY TUDORS—Henry VII., Henry 

VIII. By Rev. C. E. Moberley, M.A., late Master in 
Rugby School. 

“Is concise, scholarly, and accurate. On the epoch of which 
it treats, we know of no work which equals it.”— N. Y.Observer. 

“ A marvel of clear and succinct brevity and good historical 
judgment. There is hardly a better book of its kind to be 
named.”— New York Independent. 

THE AGE OF ELIZABETH. By Rev. M. 
Creighton, M.A. 

“ Clear and compact in style ; careful in their facts, and 
just in interpretation of them. It sheds much light on the 
progress of the Reformation and the origin of the Popish 
reaction during Queen Elizabeth’s reign ; also, the relation of 
Jesuitism to the latter.”— Presbyterian Review. 

“ A clear, concise, and just story of an era crowded with 
events of interest and importance.”— New York World. 

THE THIRTY YEARS’ WAR—1618-I 648. 

By Samuel Rawson Gardiner. 

“ As a manual it will prove of the greatest practical value, 
while to the general reader it will afford a clear and interesting 
account of events. We know of no more spirited and attractive 
recital of the great era. ”— Boston Saturday Evening Gazette. 

“ The thrilling story of those times has never been told so 
vividly or succinctly as in this volume. ”— Episcopal Register. 



EPOCHS OF MODERN HISTORY. 


THE PURITAN REVOLUTION ; and the First 
Two Stuarts, 1 603- 1 660. By Samuel Rawson 
Gardiner. 

“ The narrative is condensed and brief, yet sufficiently com¬ 
prehensive to give an adequate view of the events related.” 
—Chicago Standard. 

“ Mr. Gardiner uses his researches in an admirably clear 
and fair way ”— Congregationalist. 

“The sketch ;s concise, but clear and perfectly intelligible.” 
—Hartford Courant. 

THE ENGLISH RESTORATION AND LOUIS 
XIV., from the Peace of Westphalia to the 
Peace of Nimwegen. By Osmund Airy, M.A. 

“ It is crisply and admirably written. An immense amount 
of information is conveyed and with great clearness, the 
arrangement of the subjects showing great skill and a thor¬ 
ough command of the complicated theme.”— Boston Saturday 
Evening Gazette. 

“The author writes with fairness and discrimination, and 
has given a clear and intelligible presentation of the time.”— 
New York Evangelist. 

THE FALL OF THE STUARTS; and Western 
Europe. By Rev. Edward Hale, M.A. 

“ A valuable compend to the general reader and scholar.” 
—Providence Journal. 

“It will be found of great value. It is a very graphic 
account of the history of Europe during the 17th century, 
and is admirably adapted for the use of students.”— Boston 
Saturday Evening Gazette. 

‘ 'An admirable handbook for the student. ”— TheChurchman. 

THE AGE OF ANNE. By Edward E. Morris, M.A. 

“ The author’s arrangement of the material is remarkably 
clear, his selection and adjustment of the facts judicious, his 
historical judgment fair and candid, while the style wins by 
its simple elegance.”— Chicago Standard. 

“An excellent compendium of the history of an important 
period.”— The Watchman. 



EPOCHS OF MODERN HISTORY. 


THE EARLY HANOVERIANS—Europe from 
the Peace of Utrecht to the Peace of Aix- 
fa-Chapelle. By Edward E. Morris, M.A. 

“ Masterly, condensed, and vigorous, this is one of the 
books which it is a delight to read at odd moments ; which 
are broad and suggestive, and at the same time condensed in 
treatment. ”— Christian Advocate. 

“A remarkably clear and readable summary of the salient 
points of interest. The maps and tables, no less than the 
author’s style and treatment of the subject, entitle the volume 
to the highest claims of recognition.”— Boston Daily Ad¬ 
vertiser. 

FREDERICK THE GREAT, AND THE SEVEN 
YEARS’ WAR. By F. W. Longman. 

“The subject is most important, and the author has treated 
it in a way which is both scholarly and entertaining.”— The 
Churchman. 

“Admirably adapted to interest school boys, and older 
heads will find it pleasant reading.”— New York Tribune. 

THE FRENCH REVOLUTION, AND FIRST 
EMPIRE. By William O’Connor Morris. With 
Appendix by Andrew D. White, LL.D., ex-President of 
Cornell University. 

“ We have long needed a simple compendium of this period, 
and we have here one which is brief enough to be easily run 
through with, and yet particular enough to make entertaining 
reading.”— New York Evening Post. 

“ The author has well accomplished his difficult task of 
sketching in miniature the grand and crowded drama of the 
French Revolution and the Napoleonic Empire, showing 
himself to be no servile compiler, but capable of judicious 
and independent criticism.”— Springfield Republican. 

THE EPOCH OF REFORM-1 830 - 1 850 . By 

Justin McCarthy. 

“ Mr. McCarthy knows the period of which he writes 
thoroughly, and the result is a narrative that is at once enter¬ 
taining and trustworthy.”— New York Examiner. 

“ The narrative is clear and comprehensive, and told with 
abundant knowledge and grasp of the subject.”— Boston 
Courier. 



IMPORTANT HISTORICAL 
WORKS. 

CIVILIZATION DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
Especially in its Relation to Modern Civil¬ 
ization. By George B. Adams, Professor of History in 
Yale University. 8vo, $2.50. 

Professor Adams has here supplied the need of a text-book 
for the study of Mediaeval History in college classes at once 
thorough and yet capable of being handled in the time usually 
allowed to it. He has aimed to treat the subject in a manner 
which its place in the college curriculum demands, by present¬ 
ing as clear a view as possible of the underlying and organic 
growth of our civilization, how its foundations were laid and its 
chief elements introduced. 

Prof. Kendric C. Babcock, University of Minnesota:—“It 
is one of the best books of the kind which I have seen. We 
shall use it the coming term.” 

Prof. Marshall S. Brown, Michigan University:—“I 
regard the work as a very valuable treatment of the great 
movements of history during the Middle Ages, and as one 
destined to be extremely helpful to young students.’’ 

Boston Herald: —“Professor Adams admirably presents 
the leading features of a thousand years of social, political, 
and religious development in the history of the world. It is 
valuable from beginning to end.” 

HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. By E. 

Benjamin Andrews, D.D., LL.D., President of Brown 
University. With maps. Two vols., crown octavo, $4.00. 

Boston Advertiser :—“ We doubt if there has been so 
complete, graphic, and so thoroughly impartial a history of our 
country condensed into the same space. It must become a 
standard.” 

Advance: —“One of the best popular, general histories of 
America, if not the best.” 

Herald and Presbyter :—“ The very history that many 
people have been looking for. It does not consist simply of 
minute statements, but treats of causes and effects with philo¬ 
sophical grasp and thoughtfulness. It is the work of a scholar 
and thinker.” 


IMPORTANT HISTORICAL WORKS. 


THE HISTORY OF ROME, from the Earliest 
Time to the Period of Its Decline. By Dr. 

Theodor Mommsen. Translated by W. P. Dickson, D.D., 
LL.D. A New Edition, Revised throughout, and embodying 
recent additions. Five vols., with Map. Price per set, $10.00. 

“A work of the very highest merit; its learning is exact 
and profound ; its narrative full of genius and skill; its 
descriptions of men are admirably vivid .”—London Times. 

“Since the days of Niebuhr, no work on Roman History 
has appeared that combines so much to attract, instruct, and 
charm the reader. Its style—a rare quality in a German 
author—is vigorous, spirited, and animated.”—Dr. Schmitz. 

THE PROVINCES OFTHE ROMAN EMPIRE. 
From Caesar to Diocletian. By Theodor 
Mommsen. Translated by William P. Dickson, D.D., 
LL.D. With maps. Two vols., 8vo, $6.00. 

“ The author draws the wonderfully rich and varied picture 
of the conquest and administration of that great circle of 
peoples and lands which formed the empire of Rome outside 
of Italy, their agriculture, trade, and manufactures, their 
artistic and scientific life, through all degrees of civilization, 
with such detail and completeness as could have come from 
no other hand than that of this great master of historical re¬ 
search.”—Prof. W. A. Packard, Princeton College. 

THE HISTORY OF THE ROMAN REPUBLIC. 

Abridged from the History by Professor Theodor Mommsen, 
by C. Bryans and F. J. R. Hendy. i2mo, $1.75. 

“ It is a genuine boon that the essential parts of Mommsen’s 
Rome are thus brought within the easy reach of all, and the 
abridgment seems to me to preserve unusually well the glow 
and movement of the original.”—Prof. Tracy Peck, Yale 
University. 

“The condensation has been accurately and judiciously 
effected. I heartily commend the volume as the most adequate 
embodiment, in a single volume, of the main results of modem 
historical research in the field of Roman affairs.”—Prof. 
Henry M. Baird, University of City of New York. 



IMPORTANT HISTORICAL IVOR NS. 


THE DAWN OF HISTORY. An Introduction 
to Pre-Historic Study. New and Enlarged Edition. 
Edited by C. F. Keary. i2mo, cloth, $1.25. 

This work treats successively of the earliest traces of man ; 
of language, its growth, and the story it tells of the pre-his- 
toric users of it; of early social life, the religions, mythologies, 
and folk-tales, and of the history of writing. The present 
edition contains about one hundred pages of new matter, 
embodying the results of the latest researches. 

“A fascinating manual. In its way, the work is a model 
of what a popular scientific work should be .”—Boston Sat. 
Eve. Gazette. 

THE ORIGIN OF NATIONS. By Professor George 
Rawlinson, M.A. I2mo, with maps, $1.00. 

The first part of this book discusses the antiquity of civiliza¬ 
tion in Egypt and the other early nations of the East. The 
second part is an examination of the ethnology of Genesis, 
showing its accordance with the latest results of modern 
ethnographical science. 

“A work of genuine scholarly excellence, and a useful 
offset to a great deal of the superficial current literature on 
such subjects. ”— Congregationalist. 

MANUAL OF MYTHOLOGY. For the Use 
of Schools, Art Students, and General 
Readers. Founded on the Works of Pet- 
iscus, Preller, and Welcker. By Alexander 
S. Murray, Department of Greek and Roman Antiquities, 
British Museum. With 45 Plates. Reprinted from the 
Second Revised London Edition. Crown 8vo, $ 1 - 75 . 

“ It has been acknowledged the best work on the subject 
to be found in a concise form, and as it embodies the results 
of the latest researches and discoveries in ancient mythologies, 
it is superior for school and general purposes as a handbook 
to any of the so-called standard works .”—Cleveland Herald. 

“ Whether as a manual for reference, a text-book for school 
use, or for the general reader, the book will be found very 
valuable and interesting .”—Boston Journal. 




IMPORTANT HISTORICAL WORKS. 


THE HISTORY OF GREECE. By Prof. Dr. 
Ernst Curtius. Translated by Adolphus William Ward, 
M.A., Fellow of St. Peter’s College, Cambridge, Prof, of 
History in Owen’s College, Manchester. Five volumes, 
crown 8vo. Price per set, $10.00. 

“ We cannot express our opinion of Dr. Curtius’ book bet¬ 
ter than by saying that it may be fitly ranked with Theodor 
Mommsen’s great work .”—London Spectator. 

“As an introduction to the study of Grecian history, no 
previous work is comparable to the present for vivacity and 
picturesque beauty, while in sound learning and accuracy of 
statement it is not inferior to the elaborate productions which 
enrich the literature of the age.”— N. Y. Daily Tribune. 

Cv3lSAR: a Sketch. By James Anthony Froude, 
M.A. i2mo, gilt top, $1.50. 

“This book is a most fascinating biography and is by far 
the best account of Julius Caesar to be found in the English 
language .”—The London Standard. 

“He combines into a compact and nervous narrative all 
that is known of the personal, social, political, and military 
life of Caesar ; and with his sketch of Caesar includes other 
brilliant sketches of the great man, his friends, or rivals, 
who contemporaneously with him formed the principal figures 
in the Roman world.”— Harper's Monthly. 

CICERO. Life of Marcus Tullius Cicero. By 

William Forsyth, M.A., Q.C. 20 Engravings. New 
Edition. 2 vols., crown 8vo, in one, gilt top, $2.50. 

The author has not only given us the most complete and 
well-balanced account of the life of Cicero ever published ; 
he has drawn an accurate and graphic picture of domestic life 
among the best classes of the Romans, one which the reader 
of general literature, as well as the student, may peruse with 
pleasure and profit. 

“A scholar without pedantry, and a Christian without cant, 
Mr. Forsyth seems to have seized with praiseworthy tact the 
precise attitude which it behooves a biographer to take when 
narrating the life, the personal life of Cicero. Mr. Forsyth 
produces what we venture to say will become one of the 
classics of English biographical literature, and will be wel¬ 
comed by readers of all ages and both sexes, of all professions 
and of no profession at all .”—London Quarterly. 



VALUABLE WORKS ON 
CLASSICAL LITERATURE 


THE HISTORY OF ROMAN LITERATURE. 
From the Earliest Period to the Death of 
Marcus Aurelius. With Chronological Tables, etc., 
for the use of Students. By C. T. Cruttwell, M.A. Crown 
8vo, $2.50. 

Mr. Cruttwell’s book is written throughout from a purely 
literary point of view, and the aim has been to avoid tedious 
and trivial details. The result is a volume not only suited 
for the student, but remarkably readable for all who possess 
any interest in the subject. 

“ Mr. Cruttwell has given us a genuine history of Roman 
literature, not merely a descriptive list of authors and their 
productions, but a well elaborated portrayal of the successive 
stages in the intellectual development of the Romans and the 
various forms of expression which these took in literature.”— 
N. V. Nation. 


UNIFORM WITH THE ABOVE. 

A HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. 
From the Earliest Period of Demosthenes. 

By Frank Byron Jevons, M.A., Tutor in the University 
of Durham. Crown 8vo, $2.50. 

The author goes into detail with sufficient fullness to make 
the history complete, but he never loses sight of the com¬ 
manding lines along which the Greek mind moved, and a 
clear understanding of which is necessary to every intelligent 
student of universal literature. 

“ It is beyond all question the best history of Greek litera¬ 
ture that has hitherto been published .”—London Spectator. 


CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS 

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